Thanks, Massimo. I can see how that would work well in the web2py
environment.
In our organization, however, we have heterogeneous systems that use REST
interfaces to share data. So, I am hoping to find a solution that aligns
as closely as possible with REST principles.
On Tuesday, May 19, 2015 at 10:38:36 PM UTC-7, Massimo Di Pierro wrote:
>
> Hello Kevin,
>
> the best way is to make an Ajax request with content type 'application/json'
> and put the JSON search_criteria into the HTTP request body. For example:
>
> curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" - X POST -d "{...}"
> http://..../mypage
>
> where {...} is your JSON object. Then in the web2py app
>
> def mypage():
> data = request.post_vars
> ...
>
> data will contain the parsed JSON as a python object.
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, 19 May 2015 19:50:22 UTC-5, [email protected]
> <javascript:> wrote:
>>
>> We are developing a RESTful API. One of our use cases requires that we
>> query a resource with somewhat complex search criteria. Internally, the
>> search criteria would be represented by a data structure similar to this:
>>
>> search_criteria = {'date':'5/31/2015',
>> 'locations':[{'location_name':'Los Angeles',
>> 'attendees':10,
>> 'services':['Housekeeping','Catering']
>> },
>> {'location_name':'New York',
>> 'attendees':5,
>> 'services':['Housekeeping']
>> }
>> ],
>> 'duration':60
>>
>> }
>>
>>
>> What would be a recommended strategy for passing complex query parameters to
>> a RESTful API built with web2py?
>>
>>
>> Our short term solution has been to provide simple query parameters that can
>> contain delimited values. For example:
>>
>>
>> GET .../api/available_resources/?date=2015-05-31&locations=Los
>> Angeles|New
>> York&attendees=10|5&services=Housekeeping,Catering|Housekeeping&duration=60
>>
>>
>> But, this seems less than ideal. It is not intuitive that Los Angeles
>> should be associated with 10 attendees and the two specified services.
>>
>>
>> Options we have considered include:
>>
>>
>> - Treating the search criteria as a resource. Thus, we would first POST
>> the complex search criteria and receive a handle in return. Then, we would
>> GET available_resources, passing the search criteria handle. (This seems to
>> be messy regarding how to handle the search criteria. Is it stored
>> statefully in the session? Is it written to the database? When would it
>> get cleaned up?)
>> - Treat the search as a command. We would POST a resource search command
>> with a JSON representation of the search criteria in the body.
>> - Implement oData parsing for the query string. (While it is true that
>> oData syntax could be constructed to meet the needs, yikes!, that's a lot of
>> overhead for the API consumer and the API parser.)
>>
>> Are any of these considered best practice? Or, is there yet another
>> strategy that we could consider?
>>
>> Many thanks for your help!
>>
>> Kevin
>>
>>
>>
>>
--
Resources:
- http://web2py.com
- http://web2py.com/book (Documentation)
- http://github.com/web2py/web2py (Source code)
- https://code.google.com/p/web2py/issues/list (Report Issues)
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