REST Web Services in ColdFusion 10

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REST Web Services in ColdFusion 10

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CF10RESTPreso

ColdFusion 10 REST Presentation

On Github cfjedimaster / CF10RESTPreso

REST Web Services in ColdFusion 10

Presented by Raymond Camden / @cfjedimaster

Who am I?

  • Developer Evangelist for Adobe
  • ColdFusion, Ajax, HTML5, Mobile, Star Wars expert
  • Blogging at www.raymondcamden.com
  • Tweeting at @cfjedimaster

What is REST?

  • "Representantional State Transfer" and was first coined way back in 2000.
  • Focused on URLs that represent a resource...
  • And verbs based on HTTP to manipulate them

Example of a simple web service

  • example.com/api.cfc?method=getUsers
  • example.com/api.cfc?method=getUser&userid=1
  • example.com/api.cfc?method=deleteUser&usertodelete=1

Example of REST-based web service

URL Method example.com/api/users GET example.com/api/users/1 GET example.com/api/users/1 DELETE

REST in ColdFusion 10

  • Based on CFCs (no surprise there)
  • Requires registration

Registering REST Services

  • ColdFusion Administrator or Code
  • Defines the base URL for your REST service (!! Pay Attention !!)
  • Must be refreshed on every darn change

Registering REST Services

Root Path: Isn't the folder with the CFCs, but the root path of your application. Service Mapping: Defines part of the URL to be used, defaults to the Application name.

Determining the URL

http://YOURSERVER / rest / {service mapping/app name} / {cfc restpath (more on that in a moment)}

Real Example

http://127.0.0.1/rest/RestPreso/greetService

CFC Syntax

  • rest="true" at top level
  • restPath at the top level (final part of the URL)
  • Lots of additional metadata

Example

component rest="true" restPath="greetingService"  {

	remote string function sayHello() httpMethod="get" {
		return "Hello World";
	}

}

How in the heck is this working?!?!

  • The restPath defines the core URL (but not the only URL as we will see soon)
  • How you call the CFC determines the method run
  • This is NOT based on URL parameters (although...)
  • This is based on HTTP headers

Demo

Run /getpost.cfm

Valid HTTP Methods

  • GET
  • POST
  • PUT
  • DELETE
  • HEAD
  • OPTIONS

More info: Wikipedia

Content Negotiation

  • Your REST service may wish to support different data formats
  • You can build support to respond based on what the client asks for

Demo

Run /testcontentnegotiation.cfm

Side Notes

  • You can override the encoding. (Will show if we have time...)
  • You can specify in the URL: baseurl.json or baseurl.xml

Break

Subresources

If http://SOMEURL/users represents all users, how do I specify a user?

http://SOMEURL/users/5

Subresources

Your subresource can be anything - it could be a specific user or a specific type of users.

http://SOMEURL/users/5 (user #5) http://SOMEURL/users/top (best users) http://SOMEURL/users/top/comments (best users by # of comments)

Subresources - how it's done

  • restPath argument to cffunction
  • Supports static and regex style paths

Demo

Static subresources.

Subresources - Dynamic

  • Specify {something} in restPath
  • Specify {something:REGEX} to match a regex
  • Should map to arguments in the CFC

Demo

Dynamic subresources.

Putting it Together

Misc...

  • restInitApp (Note - can't make a default)
  • restDeleteApp

More misc...

  • restSetResponse
  • Used with returnType=void
  • Gives precise control over the result

Any Questions

  • web: raymondcamden.com
  • email: raymondcamden@gmail.com
  • twitter: @cfjedimaster