Re: Problems with REST API (Re: Is it intentional that REST interface requires basic authentication?)

[Scott Wilson]

On 27 Feb 2010, at 23:35, Ross Gardler wrote:

On further investigation I have come to the conclusion that the implementation of the various controllers is either horribly broken

That's a bit harsh!

or impossibly hard to follow due to bad naming conventions e.g. in the WidgetController "restName" becomes "resource_id" which then becomes "type".

Fixed.

It looks to me like this code has been hacked and refactored a number of times and never cleaned up to ensure consistency.

Yes, that's fair. Originally Wookie had a very unRESTlike API which has been moved towards consistency through several refactorings. The abstract Controller base class represents a standard REST API, which each interface implements and/or overrides with its own behaviour.

In short, the code needs rewriting and since I'm trying to write the connector framework to use the REST API I guess I'll have to do it :-(

I'm happy to fix anything in the controllers - just flag it up with a test case against the API spec.

Since I don't understand why it was implemented in this way to start with I'd appreciate some careful reviews of my commits on this area.

Ross

On 27/02/2010 23:18, Ross Gardler wrote:

On 27/02/2010 22:19, Ross Gardler wrote:

On 27/02/2010 18:51, Scott Wilson wrote:

On 27 Feb 2010, at 12:55, Ross Gardler wrote:

The REST documentation makes no mention of needing to authenticate. Is

it intentional that some requests need to be authenticated, e..g.
participants

...

The only requests that require authentication are those that are

services/categories, and these are documented at

equivalent to admin interface functions for creating/updating/ deleting

...

All other API requests only use the API key for authentication - if

this is a configuration problem.

Basic auth is being requested for these (such as participants), then

This is using Wookie in dev mode (i.e. ant run) and thus there is no
local config messing with things.

Here's what appears to be happening:




an exception (unauthorized) which results in a request for
authentication.


be my code.

Performing a GET request for participants with a valid API Key is fine Performing a GET request for participants with an invalid API Key throws I've found other problems too, but have not fully debugged them, it may

No, it's not my code.

When doing a POST request via participants request().getPathInfo() in
Controller returns null.

From the Java api:

"public java.lang.String getPathInfo() Returns any extra path
information associated with the URL the client sent when it made this
request. The extra path information follows the servlet path but
precedes the query string. This method returns null if there was no
extra path information. "

In web.xml we have:

<servlet>
<description></description>
<display-name>Participants</display-name>
<servlet-name>ParticipantServlet</servlet-name>
<servlet-class>
org.apache.wookie.controller.ParticipantsController
</servlet-class>
<load-on-startup>2</load-on-startup>
</servlet>
<servlet-mapping>
<servlet-name>ParticipantServlet</servlet-name>
<url-pattern>/participants</url-pattern>
</servlet-mapping>


currently implemented in the Controller.

It is my initial evaluation that the whole REST API suffers from this
problem. One solution is to use request.getContextPath() and
request.getRequestURI() rather than getPathInfo().


resources) and quite possibly some other functionality. Why is it

old non-REST interface?

Ross

Ross

In other words we can't use getPathInfo() to retrieve the restName as is However, this will break the default behaviour (to get an index of all implemented this way in the first instance - is the code shared by the

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