rest - define REST web APIs and call them inline or asychronously
There are two types of usage this package supports: simple calls, and complete interfaces. In an interface you specify a set of rules and then the package builds the commands which correspond to the REST methods. These commands can have many options such as input and output transformations and data type specific formatting. This results in a cleaner and simpler script. On the other hand, while a simple call is easier and quicker to implement it is also less featureful. It takes the url and a few options about the command and returns the result directly. Any formatting or checking is up to rest of the script.
In simple usage you make calls using the http method procedures and then check or process the returned data yourself
These commands are all equivalent except for the http method used. If you use simple then the method should be specified as an option in the config dictionary. If that is not done it defaults to get. If a body is needed then the config dictionary must be present, however it is allowed to be empty.
The config dictionary supports the following keys
Two quick examples:
Example 1, Yahoo Boss:
set appid APPID
set search tcl
set res [rest::get http://boss.yahooapis.com/ysearch/web/v1/$search [list appid $appid]]
set res [rest::format_json $res]
Example 2, Twitter:
set url http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json
set query [list status $text]
set res [rest::simple $url $query {
method post
auth {basic user password}
format json
}]
An interface to a REST API consists of a series of definitions of REST calls contained in an array. The name of that array becomes a namespace containing the defined commands. Each key of the array specifies the name of the call, with the associated configuration a dictionary, i.e. key/value pairs. The acceptable keys, i.e. legal configuration options are described below. After creating the definitions in the array simply calling rest::create_interface with the array as argument will then create the desired commands.
Example, Yahoo Weather:
package require rest
set yweather(forecast) {
url http://weather.yahooapis.com/forecastrss
req_args { p: }
opt_args { u: }
}
rest::create_interface yweather
puts [yweather::forecast -p 94089]
This command saves a copy of the dynamically created procedures for all the API calls specified in the array variable name to the file, for later loading.
The result of the command is the empty string
This command prints a description of all API calls specified in the array variable name to the channel stdout.
The result of the command is the empty string.
This command parses an url query string into a dictionary and returns said dictionary as its result.
If key is specified the command will not return the entire dictionary, but only the value of that key.
This command implements a custom parserfor command options.
A dictionary of options and their values that are always present in the output.
A list of options that must be supplied by words
A list of options that may appear in the words, but are not required. The elements must be in one of three forms:
The option may be present or not, no default.
When present the option requires an argument.
When not present use value as default.
The words to parse into options and values.
The result of the command is a list containing two elements. The first element is a dictionary containing the parsed options and their values. The second element is a list of the remaining words.
This command takes a string, substitutes values for any option identifiers found inside and returns the modified string as its results.
The values to substitute are found in the variable var, which is expected to contain a dictionary mapping from the option identifiers to replace to their values. Note that option identifiers which have no key in var are replaced with the empty string.
The option identifiers in string have to follow the syntax %...% where ... may contain any combination of lower-case alphanumeric characters, plus underscore, colon and dash.
This command creates procedures for all the API calls specified in the array variable name.
The name of that array becomes a namespace containing the defined commands. Each key of the array specifies the name of the call, with the associated configuration a dictionary, i.e. key/value pairs. The legal keys and their meanings are:
The value of this required option must be the target of the http request.
The value of this option must be a short string describing the call. Default to the empty string, if not specified. Used only by ::rest::describe.
The value of this option indicates if arguments are required for the call's request body or not. The acceptable values are listed below. Defaults to optional if not specified.
The call has no request body, none must be supplied.
A request body can be supplied, but is not required.
A request body must be supplied.
This value must be followed by the name of an option, treating the entire string as a list. The request body will be used as the value of that option.
A request body must be supplied and will be interpreted as each argument representing one part of a mime/multipart document. Arguments must be lists containing 2 elements, a list of header keys and values, and the mime part body, in this order.
Same as mime_multipart, but the Content-Type header is set to multipart/<value>.
The value of this option must be the name of the HTTP method to call on the url. Defaults to GET, if not specified. The acceptable values are GET, POST, and PUT, regardless of letter-case.
When present the value of this option specifies the name of a previously defined call. The definition of that call is copied to the current call, except for the options specified by the current call itself.
When present the value of this option contains a list of options in the current call. These options are removed from the definition. Use this after copying an existing definition to remove options, instead of overriding their value.
Specification of additional header fields. The value of this option must be a dictionary, interpreted to contain the new header fields and their values. The default is to not add any additional headers.
The value of this option specifies the content type for the request data.
The value of this option is a list naming the required arguments of the call. Names ending in a colon will require a value.
The value of this option a list naming the arguments that may be present for a call but are not required.
The value of this option a list naming the arguments that are always the same. No sense in troubling the user with these. A leading dash (-) is allowed but not required to maintain consistency with the command line.
The value of this option specifies how to authenticate the calls. No authentication is done if the option is not specified.
The user may configure the basic authentication by overriding the procedure basic_auth in the namespace of interface. This procedure takes two arguments, the username and password, in this order.
The user may configure a bearer token as authentication. The value is the token passed to the HTTP authorization header.
The value must actually be a list with the second element the name of a procedure which will be called to perform request signing.
If this option is present then the method will be created as an async call. Such calls will return immediately with the value of the associated http token instead of the call's result. The event loop must be active to use this option.
The value of this option is treated as a command prefix which is invoked when the HTTP call is complete. The prefix will receive at least two additional arguments, the name of the calling procedure and the status of the result (one of OK or ERROR), in this order.
In case of OK a third argument is added, the data associated with the result.
If and only if the ERROR is a redirection, the location redirected to will be added as argument. Further, if the configuration key error-body is set to true the data associated with the result will be added as argument as well.
The http request header will be available in that procedure via upvar token token.
The value of this option is a list of cookies to be passed in the http header. This is a shortcut to the headers option.
The value of this option is a command prefix or script to perform a transformation on the query before invoking the call. A script transform is wrapped into an automatically generated internal procedure.
If not specified no transformation is done.
The command (prefix) must accept a single argument, the query (a dictionary) to transform, and must return the modified query (again as dictionary) as its result. The request body is accessible in the transform command via upvar body body.
The value of this option specifies the format of the returned data. Defaults to auto if not specified. The acceptable values are:
Auto detect between xml and json.
This is formatted as a special case of xml.
The value of this option is a command prefix or script to perform a transformation on the result of a call (before the application of the output transform as per format). A script transform is wrapped into an automatically generated internal procedure.
If not specified no transformation is done.
The command (prefix) must accept a single argument, the result to transform, and must return the modified result as its result.
The http request header is accessible in the transform command via upvar token token
The value of this option is a command prefix or script to perform a transformation on the result of a call (after the application of the output transform as per format). A script transform is wrapped into an automatically generated internal procedure.
If not specified no transformation is done.
The command (prefix) must accept a single argument, the result to transform, and must return the modified result as its result.
The http request header is accessible in the transform command via upvar token token
The value of this option must be list of two expressions, either of which may be empty.
The first expression is checks the OK condition, it must return true when the result is satisfactory, and false otherwise.
The second expression is the ERROR condition, it must return false unless there is an error, then it has to return true.
The value of this option determines whether to return the response when encountering an HTTP error, or not. The default is to not return the response body on error.
See callback above for more information.
The value of this option determines whether to set a timeout on the HTTP call. By default, no timeout is set.
Timeout value is accepted in milliseconds.
Yahoo Geo:
set ygeo(parse) {
url http://wherein.yahooapis.com/v1/document
method post
body { arg documentContent }
}
ygeo::parse "san jose ca"
# "san jose ca" will be interpreted as if it were specified as the -documentContent option
Google Docs:
set gdocs(upload) {
url http://docs.google.com/feeds/default/private/full
body mime_multipart
}
gdocs::upload [list {Content-Type application/atom+xml} $xml] [list {Content-Type image/jpeg} $filedata]
Delicious:
set delicious(updated) {
url https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/update
auth basic
}
rest::create_interface flickr
flickr::basic_auth username password
Flickr:
set flickr(auth.getToken) {
url http://api.flickr.com/services/rest/
req_args { api_key: secret: }
auth { sign do_signature }
}
rest::create_interface flickr
proc ::flickr::do_signature {query} {
# perform some operations on the query here
return $query
}
The package provides functional but incomplete implementations for the following services:
Please either read the package's implementation, or use rest::describe after loading it for their details.
Do not forget developers' documentation on the respective sites either.
The rest package can be used with https-secured services, by requiring the TLS package and then registering it with the http package it is sitting on top of. Example
package require tls
http::register https 443 ::tls::socket
This package uses the TLS package to handle the security for https urls and other socket connections.
Policy decisions like the set of protocols to support and what ciphers to use are not the responsibility of TLS, nor of this package itself however. Such decisions are the responsibility of whichever application is using the package, and are likely influenced by the set of servers the application will talk to as well.
For example, in light of the recent POODLE attack discovered by Google many servers will disable support for the SSLv3 protocol. To handle this change the applications using TLS must be patched, and not this package, nor TLS itself. Such a patch may be as simple as generally activating tls1 support, as shown in the example below.
package require tls
tls::init -tls1 1 ;# forcibly activate support for the TLS1 protocol
... your own application code ...
This document, and the package it describes, will undoubtedly contain bugs and other problems. Please report such in the category rest of the Tcllib Trackers. Please also report any ideas for enhancements you may have for either package and/or documentation.
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