Client REST API

[Elmar Zeeb]

Hi to all,

i'm looking into apache ace to check if i can use it as backend for a 
web based market to install software extensions on an osgi based 
application. In this use case i can't use the vaadin based ui but 
started to implement a java based client for the client REST API.

I'm aware of the amdatu ace client, but i wanted to implement a client 
on my own to understand the api and apache ace. Currently i'm able to 
create, modify and delete different client resources (artifact, feature, 
distribution and target) but have problems with associations. I have 
looked at the client rest api docu on ace.apache.org and at 
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/ACE-151 to get a better 
understanding of associations filters and queries.

I don't understand how to set the leftEndpoint and rightEndpoint 
attributes of associations. As written on the web site these attributes 
are LDAP filters. Does this mean that i have to parse the LDAP filter on 
the client side to check which resources are associated? Is there a way 
to let ace do the filtering and return resource ids? I'm aware of the 
ace/clients/tmp/9876/artifact2feature?left=&right=query. Is there 
something like 
ace/clients/tmp/9876/artifact2feature/12345/leftResourceIdsto query all 
left resource ids of an association?

The vaadin UI uses attribute based LDAP filters to create associations. 
I would like to have static associations based on resource ids - so i 
use LDAP filters like "(id=[resource id])" to specify endpoints. The 
vaadin ui can't display these associations. ACE-151 mentions that there 
are no checks for LDAP filters so the filter may not work.

So my question is how to specify association endpoints and how to query 
resource ids of associates resources with the client REST API?

Regards,
Elmar