Comments on Keith Chapman's Blog: RESTfull Mashup with WSDL 2.0 - WSO2 Mashup Server...

I know, this is maybe a bit necro, but unfortunate...

2011-01-24T16:29:06.498+05:30

I know, this is maybe a bit necro, but unfortunately the Link to the mooshup-Server is dead.

We would provide the facility to turn off the SOAP...

2008-09-28T16:03:00.000+05:30

We would provide the facility to turn off the SOAP Bindings completely in a future release of the Mashup Server. This should make things more clear.

BTW the Mashup server runs on top of Apache Axis2. So this goes to show the REST support in Axis2 as well.

Thanks for clarifying, but I find that confusing, ...

2008-09-28T15:55:00.000+05:30

Thanks for clarifying, but I find that confusing, particularly for a demo.

By default the try-it uses the first binding in th...

2008-09-28T15:46:00.000+05:30

By default the try-it uses the first binding in the WSDL (cause the try-it is generated off the WSDL). In the case of the demo it defaults to SOAP 1.1 hence you would see POST all the time. You could change the binding in use by clicking on the expand to change section at the top left of the page. Change the selected endpoint to HTTPEndpoint (That will use all the REST properties We've exposed).

The try-it does something clever as well. If an operation is exposed over GET and is explicitly marked as safe it will show you the URL that the operation is exposed under.

But looking at the demo (http://mooshup.com/servic...

2008-09-28T11:57:00.000+05:30

But looking at the demo (http://mooshup.com/services/keith/RESTDemo?tryit) via Firebug, all I see are POSTs.

Subbu,

The main intent for this demo was to...

2008-09-27T00:09:00.000+05:30

Subbu,

The main intent for this demo was to show how the RESTfull service described by Stefan can be described using WSDL 2.0.

If you look at the HTTPBinding section of this wsdl you will notice that getting all orders and customers are exposed over GET. You can get all customers at http://mooshup.com/services/keith/RESTDemo.HTTPEndpoint/customers and all orders at http://mooshup.com/services/keith/RESTDemo.HTTPEndpoint/orders.

Currently the Mashup Server which I used to do this demo does not support throwing custom exceptions. If it was to support that I could have thrown 404 rather than throwing the default 500. If I was do write this service in Java and deploy it on Axis2 I could have done that.

Keith - just looking at the demo you put together....

2008-09-26T23:51:00.000+05:30

Keith - just looking at the demo you put together.

I am a bit confused about the intent of the demo. Is the intent to demonstrate that it is possible to use WSDL 2 for describing a RESTful HTTP web service, or is to demonstrate that it is possible to build a RESTful application using SOAP-based technologies?

In any case, I expected to see the use of uniform interface in your demo, but all I see are POSTs even for idempotent and safe requests such as getting all orders or customers. When I type in an order number that does not exist, and hit cancelOrder, I get a 500 instead of a 404.

Could you clarify?

Hi,

Nice to see that plenty of people are f...

2008-09-23T07:40:00.000+05:30

Hi,

Nice to see that plenty of people are finding this example useful. And on your question,

Yes the spec does support it. Quoting from what whttp:method can be: "{http method} OPTIONAL. A xs:string, to the Binding Operation component, indicating the value for the HTTP Request Method for this specific Binding Operation."

So it basically can support any standard HTTP request method.

The Primer makes this even clearer by stating: "Which HTTP operation will be used. (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, and other HTTP operations are supported.)" under the features of the HTTP binding.

And yes WSDL 2.0 because a W3C Recommendation on 26 June 2007.

Support for turning off the SOAP Binding completel...

2008-09-16T10:52:00.000+05:30

Support for turning off the SOAP Binding completely needs to come from Axis2. I agree that its a nice to have feature. I'll fire up a discussion on this on the Axis2 mailing list.

Once thats in we can make it available to mashup authors.

Keith, I'd totally turn off the SOAP bindings from...

2008-09-16T08:36:00.000+05:30

Keith, I'd totally turn off the SOAP bindings from this mashup - avoids any feeling that there's SOAP involved this scenario.

If we don't allow that in the mashup server yet then that's another JIRA .. allow the author to turn on/off specific bindings or go with whatever the server does.

I was initially thinking of writing the WSDL 2.0 f...

2008-09-15T23:38:00.000+05:30

I was initially thinking of writing the WSDL 2.0 first, but then realized that writing a mashup will be more useful cause it can demonstrate the practical use of the WSDL 2.0 document. As you have mentioned the JavaScript stub, tryit and documentation can auto generated all because we have a standard description for our service.

Very nice! It wasn't totally clear from reading i...

2008-09-15T23:26:00.000+05:30

Very nice! It wasn't totally clear from reading it whether you had written the WSDL 2.0 first and then the mashup or the other way around. The WSO2 Mashup Server generates the WSDL 2.0 from simple annotations in the Javascript, and I see you've used the httpLocation, httpMethod, and safe annotations to generate the appropriate parts of the WSDL - without complicated conceptual mappings. The Mashup Server turns out to be a really easy way to generate WSDL 2.0.

Also, when you choose the HTTPEndpoint, and the operations has an httpMethod of GET I think it's cool that as you fill in the form the try-it also constructs the URI for that particular REST interaction for you. Just clicking on it shows that you can invoke the service from the browser without any intermediate processing done by the try-it.

And a hearty +1 to the value of REST description as demonstrated by the Javascript stub, the try-it, the documentation summary, etc., etc. These are all artifacts that are generally needed with a REST service, and by having WSDL 2.0 available we can build a them automatically.