Presented at AuSakai 2010 in Sydney, Australia

1. SOAP and RESTful web services in
Sakai
Steve Swinsburg
Senior So;ware Engineer / Sakai Fellow
The Australian Na@onal University
September 2010

2. SOAP services
Enabling and securing them
How to use them
REST services
How to use them
En@ty Broker
Overview
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3. SOAP services
• Provided via Apache Axis
• Can expose any API method, just inject the service
bean and use it
• Run@me compila@on, can modify ‘live’
• Require a valid session, generally admin.
• There’s a webservice to do that!
http://your.sakai.server/sakai-axis/*.jws
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4. Enabling the SOAP services
• Disabled by default
• In sakai.proper@es:
webservices.allowlogin=true
webservices.allow=.+
webservices.log-allowed=true
webservices.log-denied=true
• This is insecure though. Setup properly.
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5. Using the SOAP services
• Script them via Perl / PHP / Java ...
• If Perl, the SOAP::Lite module is excellent!
• Or use a client:
• Mac: h^p://ditchnet.org/soapclient/
• PC/Mac/Linux: h^p://www.soapui.org/
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6. Demo
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7. REST services
• Provided via En@tyBroker
• RESTful URLs and adheres to HTTP standard for
ac@ons and responses
• Return XML/JSON/HTML view of an en@ty or list of
en@@es
• Default ac@ons (GET, PUT, DELETE etc)
• Can also define custom ac@ons
http://your.sakai.server/direct
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8. Using the REST services
• Simply make a request!
• /direct/profile/steve.json
• /direct/user/current.xml
• /direct/announcement/user.json?n=10&d=30
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9. Demo & jQuery code sample
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10. En@ty Broker
• Fast becoming the defacto standard for exposing
your data.
• More consumers than just Java (PHP/JS/even just
HTML)
• e.g. profile images exposed as direct link
/direct/profile/steve/image
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11. En@ty Broker
• If you have a service layer, include EB
• Can have your providers in your webapp
• Special Spring setup to allow them to register
• Can also register events with SiteStats via
En@tyBroker.
• Easy config, all done within the tool rather than within
SiteStats.
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12. EB code sample
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13. Questions?
SOAP services info and code samples
h0p://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/WEBSVCS/How+to+use
+the+Sakai+Web+Services
REST services info
h0p://your.sakai.server/direct
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