REST services are services that are executed by connecting to an URL that defines operation and parameters then it returns an answer – not seldom as JSon objects.

MDriven supports a couple of EAL operators to manage REST services. All operators reside on the selfVM variable – available only in the ViewModel context.

selfVM.RestGet(targeturl,user,pwd,optionalnestingwithheaders)

selfVM.RestPost(targeturl,user,pwd,optionalnestingwithheadersAndUploadValues)

selfVM.RestDownload(targeturl,user,pwd,optionalnestingwithheaders)

There is a also a new helper operator on selfVM:

selfVM.JSonToObjects( «<Type>» ,  JSonDataInStringFormat)

The selfVM.JSonToObjects creates objects of class Type and matches attributes and association from the json data – and it can create object trees (unclosed graphs) by following names on associations. These few additions enables us to consume Rest services that others expose.

And when it comes to exposing ourselves to others – Turnkey has two new MVC verbs: MDrivenRest/Get?command=vmname&id=rootobjref and MDrivenRest/Post?command=vmname&id=rootobjref

What they do is that they look for ViewModel named as the command-parameter, if one is found the accessgroups are checked to see if access is allowed. If it is, additional parameters sent in the url are matched against ViewModel variables – and given corresponding values. Then any actions present in the root level of the ViewModel are executed. And then the Get verb packs the viewmodel content as json in the response.

The Post verb looks in the request values after names that match the ViewModel root – if match is found the corresponding value is applied. Then changes – if any – are committed to db. The last thing for post is that it packs the complete ViewModel as json in the response. If there is an error – a string “error: <message>” is returned.

You must set RestAllowed on ViewModels you want to allow Rest access to.