Introduction

The support for invoking Business Tasks and Business Entity Methods through the RESTful interface is based on the requirements described in this article: RESTful services. Particularly the RestEntitiesWebHandler and the RestResourceService (as a Service Instance of the IRestResourceService). 

Business Task methods and Business Entity methods are exposed as RESTful resources using the same set of annotations - and actually share a lot of similarities. Business Entity invokable methods are typically PUBLIC VOID methods with a ProDataset INPUT-OUTPUT parameter and a (JSON serializable) parameter object. Business Task methods are typically PUBLIC VOID methods with zero to five ProDataset INPUT-OUTPUT parameters and a (JSON serializable) parameter object. 

Known limitations

Due to limitations of the ABL reflection API, we currently do not support ProDatasets passed as the input to Business Task and Business Entity methods. This limitation has been accepted in our design process as we expect a majority of use-cases for RESTful invocation of Business Task and Business Entity methods just requires to return data in ProDatasets, not to receive data. So, the only input message to the invokable messages supported through the RESTful interface is the parameter object instance. 

As ABL reflection is not capable of providing the schema of the ProDataset parameters we've had to balance the requirement to provide the schema of the ProDataset parameters manually (through code in the Business Tasks) with ease of use. The schema of ProDataset parameters is required as the loosely typed JSON messages do not allow the AVM to securely create an input ProDataset "on the fly" without losing schema compatibility with the strongly typed Dataset's used within Business Tasks and Business Entities. 

Preparing Business Tasks and Entities for RESTful invocation of methods

Business Tasks

A Business Task needs to implement the ISupportsRestMethods interface in order to support RESTful invocation. This Interface is expected by the IRestResourceService.

CLASS Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.SampleBusinessTask
    IMPLEMENTS IBusinessService, ISupportsRestMethods:

A typical implementation of the required GetRestMethods method looks like this:

    /**
     * Purpose: Returns the list of supported rest adresses for methods
     *          to the caller
     * Notes:
     * @return The list of supported rest methods to the caller
     */
    METHOD PUBLIC ListRestMethod GetRestMethods ():

        RETURN (NEW RestMethodProvider():GetRestMethods (THIS-OBJECT:GetClass())) .

    END METHOD .

Business Entities

Business Entities implement the GetRestMethods method by inheriting from the Consultingwerk.OERA.BusinessEntity class. It is however still required to declare the Interface in the Business Entity class header:

CLASS Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.Sports2000.CustomerBusinessEntity
    INHERITS SmartBusinessEntity IMPLEMENTS IFetchDataByReference, ISupportsRestAddress, ISupportsRestMethods:

Defining RESTful interfaces for invokable methods

RESTful interfaces for Business Entity methods are defined by a @RestMethod annotations attached to the method (just before the METHOD block). 

    @RestMethod (address="/Customers/~{CustNum}/PutCustomerOnHold", requestMethod="get", parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.Sports2000.PutOnHoldParameter", response="dsCustomer").
    /*------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Purpose: Puts the Customer on hold
        Notes:   Client callable method
        @param dsCustomer INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET
        @param poParameter The Parameter Object for this method
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    METHOD PUBLIC VOID PutCustomerOnHold (INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET dsCustomer,
                                          poParameter AS PutOnHoldParameter):

Arguments of the @RestMethod annotation

The annotation provides the following arguments:

Every invokable method may be annotated with more than a single @RestMethod annotation to provide alternative URI's for the same method.

Population of the Parameter object

The REST request to the annotated method will be used to populate the properties of the method's parameter object using the following sources:

1. For GET requests, the query string is first parsed and query string values will be used to populate the same named properties of the parameter object
2. For all other request methods, e.g. POST, the request entity (request payload) - when the request entity represents a JSON object - is used to deserialize a JSON serializable parameter object.
3. For all request methods (GET, POST, ...), the path parameter arguments are also assigned to properties of the parameter object. This is performed at the end, so that path parameters, as the strongest component of the request URI, overwrite properties assigned by query string components or deserialized form the request entity (request payload).  

Population of the JSON response of the request

The JSON response object can either be populated by the return value of the method alone or a combination of the return value, the parameter object and the ProDataset parameter(s). For the return value we support both Consultingwerk.JsonSerializable derived types and JsonObjects/JsonArrays. For the parameter object we only support JsonSerializable instances. 

Examples

Classic invokable method of a Business Entity

    @RestMethod (address="/Customers/~{CustNum}/PutCustomerOnHold", requestMethod="get", parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.Sports2000.PutOnHoldParameter", response="dsCustomer").
    /*------------------------------------------------------------------------------
        Purpose: Puts the Customer on hold
        Notes:   Client callable method
        @param dsCustomer INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET
        @param poParameter The Parameter Object for this method
    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
    METHOD PUBLIC VOID PutCustomerOnHold (INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET dsCustomer,
                                          poParameter AS PutOnHoldParameter):

This annotation defines a method which will be exposed using a GET request under an URI like this:

http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/Customers/42/PutCustomerOnHold?Comments=Customer%20is%20put%20on%20hold

The method parameter object (PutOnHoldParameter) is populated with the Comments property as specified in the query string of the get request and the CustNum value of 42 from the path parameter.  The request will return the ProDataset dsCustomer to the caller.

Business Task method returning a serializable object to the caller

    @RestMethod (address="/CalculateSumTask", requestMethod="get",
                 parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.CalculateSumParameter",
                 response="return").
    METHOD PUBLIC DecimalHolder CalculateSum (poParameter AS CalculateSumParameter):

This annotation defines an endpoint for a Business Task method that will be exposed using a GET request under an URI like this:

http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/CalculateSumTask?Value1=17&Value2=4

The method parameter object properties are populated from the two values in the query string.  The request will return the serialized DecimalHolder instance:

{
  "Value": 21.0
}

The same method can also be exposed like this:

    @RestMethod (address="/CalculateSumTask/~{value1}/~{value2}", requestMethod="get",
                 parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.SmartComponentsDemo.OERA.CalculateSumParameter",
                 response="return").
    METHOD PUBLIC DecimalHolder CalculateSum (poParameter AS CalculateSumParameter):

http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/CalculateSumTask2/47/11

Business Task method returning two ProDatasets and optionally the parameter object

    @RestMethod (address="/GetCustomerAndInvoices", requestMethod="get",
                 parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.IntegerHolder",
                 response="poParameter,dsCustomer,dsInvoice").
    @RestMethod (address="/GetCustomerAndInvoices/~{Value}", requestMethod="get",
                 parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.IntegerHolder",
                 response="dsCustomer,dsInvoice").
    @RestMethod (address="/GetCustomerAndInvoices", requestMethod="post",
                 parameterClassName="Consultingwerk.IntegerHolder",
                 response="dsCustomer,dsInvoice").
    METHOD PUBLIC VOID GetCustomerAndInvoices (INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET dsCustomer,
                                               INPUT-OUTPUT DATASET dsInvoice,
                                               poParameter AS IntegerHolder):

This method allows clients to provide the Value property of the IntegerHolder parameter in one of three ways:

GET http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/GetCustomerAndInvoices?Value=1

GET http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/GetCustomerAndInvoices/1

POST http://localhost:8820/web/Entities/GetCustomerAndInvoices with a JSON payload like: 

{ "Value": 2 }