I am trying to generate a report page in my APEX application, using the data obtained from a REST service response.
I added a new RESTful webservice reference and sepecified a JSON output.
Then I've generated a query/report page, but this is what's being currently displayed:
Instead I want the report to display the contents of data field on the JSON response (A single row with various columns and values)
Is there any straight forward way to show each response element and field on its row and column instead of a single column and row with the whole response, like there is with XML RESTful responses?
Consider whether another output type may be more handy. If you're putting out JSON and expect to handle it in PLSQL, then you do need to realize that PLSQL does not handle that natively.
Want to handle the rest response as json in plsql? Then look into some PLSQL libraries/projects that may do this:
http://reseau.erasme.org/pl-sql-library-for-JSON?lang=en
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pljson/
Then print out the returned HTML through HTP.P calls.
Though honestly, if you want to stick with plsql you would be much better off using XML as a return type, since you can then use all the xml goodies in the database. Though simply spitting out some html structure may not be quite too interesting (but I digress).
Or call the rest service through an ajax call from javascript, and handle the object there. After all, JSON is Javascript Object Notation and should be perfect for javascript, right? Then simply inject your html somewhere in the document. Ideally you would set up a region as a container for this.
Related
I am looking for either guidance or a good example where I can map data coming from rest services to JSON "type" object which can then be used in a number of different react components.
The JSON Object will be used to map data from a few different rest services, which essentially hold very similar data which makes it better to use one object and then to bind the data to the respective React Components.
I am fairly new to React.JS and I have googled around to find a data mapper to JSON from Rest Service example.
Can anyone help?
You typically don't have to do too much, at least on the front end side. As long as the REST endpoint can return JSON responses you'll be fine. Just make sure you set the appropriate Content-Type headers in the request. Note that setting the header doesn't guarantee a JSON response, the server has to be able to send it in that format.
If you're creating the REST service yourself, you have many options. If you're using node, you can simply return a javascript object. If you're using some other language like Java, C#, etc., they come with libraries that can serialize objects into JSON for you. I use JSON.net when working with C#. In these cases, because the data will be returned as a string, you'll just need to JSON.parse() it upon receiving it and then set it to the appropriate React component's state.
I am working on play framework with SCALA as backend.
Json data is given to the front end from the controller.
I want to add HTML as value of some fields of json.
This HTML will be kept as a template and data will be added in this template at run time.
I think i should put unique names in the HTML template and then these names will be replaced by the data which i want to add at run time. Ultimately, this HTML will be added in the json response.
Is my approach right? If not, what is the best approach to add data in an HTML template,add this template in json response and send this combined response to the front-end for further use?
Is it a good practice to use string replacement to add data in an HTML template?
I think as long as you use Play, you can put your HTML templates into app/views package. Let's say you call your template mytemplate.scala.html
You can parameterize this view as any Play view.
In the place in your code where you generate your JSON response you can then call mytemplate(parameters) to get html generated, Play will do all the work here for you. Then using play.api.libs.json.JSON object's methods and related facilities you can convert this html to JSON.
So in your controller's code you will have something like Ok(JSON.toJson(mytemplate(parameters)))
This is of course a sketch, so you will need to elaborate and try.
I have a situation where I have to write a api to create a resource and amongst datafields that I need to accept is a string that is basically contents of a html file. As I see it I have a choice between structuring the entire thing as a json object where this field is a string field with urlencoded html string , and having the Content Type as multipart/form-data where each of the fields and the html string (UTF-8 encoded) is a part in the message.
Not using json is something I am not comfortable with as I feel violating the REST standards in not structuring the content of the entity I am about to create thus there is a loss of information for the consumers as they can't tell immediately looking at my api definition about what data to feed to it. But practically multipart/form-data handles stuff like html file content better and more efficient as I will not have to urlencode it and can control the char-encoding also.
What will be a better approach in current context and upholding RESTful principles ? Also are there other trade-offs i should be aware of ? what about parsing a json with a huge string field (~ 200 Kb)embedded?
EDIT :- I was reading some similar questions on SO and one approach that stood out was the 2-step approach of making a first call with metadata to create the entity and then upload the file as an UPDATE process to the created entity wherein we use multipart/form-data. In that context, I guess , what I am asking is how sound is an approach where I send both metadata and the file in a single api call as multipart data , where each metadata field is actually a part in the multipart message as is the file.
The canonical way to upload files to REST API is using the multipart/form-data. As W3 recommendation guide says:
The content type "multipart/form-data" should be used for submitting
forms that contain files, non-ASCII data, and binary data.
Multipart/form-data has advantages over base64 to represent binary data. Is sticked to REST/Http philosophy, and simplify the develop of API clients.
Returning values from Forms: multipart/form-data
W3 Recommendation guide
The good practice is to use multipart/form-data whenever files are uploaded to the server along with database fields. Do not send a base64 JSON string as the request to your Rest API as it might corrupt the file or degrade the performance of your application.
As far as documenting multipart/form-data Rest API for your consumers is concerned you have to force your API consumers to use the same form fields which you have predefined in your web service.
Returning Values from Forms: multipart/form-data
I started using FormData objects everywhere on the client-side, in lieu of regular form input fields, for dynamic REST posts. FormData is presented in a positive light in various tutorials, so I went with it.
However, down the line, this caused me problems when decoding the form data into my Go structs. FormData objects are sent as "multipart/form-data" (regardless of files being sent) and I believe my decoder in Go didn't convert the raw data back to string form. Eventually my SQL queries were throwing panics, as hex data was being sent in where strings should have been.
So with some adjustment, I could use FormData however I've decided to revert to the simple universal recommendation: Use "multipart/form-data" only for special cases like when sending files. Otherwise, just use regular "application/x-www-form-urlencoded".
So I'm building an email module in to my software. Beyond essential headers I've decided to simply keep the $headers array and store it in a TEXT column called headers. Basically the only time this JSON stored data will be retrieved is when someone does an AJAX request to look at the extended headers (not loaded by default). I'll pull it from MySQL, convert the JSON to a PHP array and iterate over each of the header fields. So in other words I won't be selectively choosing any parts of the array inside of the JSON (inside of the database), merely as a string to be handled by PHP. In this case is using TEXT data type appropriate? I'm also open to other advice.
Sure, that's fine. You could also serialize and unserialize the array instead of using JSON; I don't think there's any reason to convert it to a JavaScript object if it's only ever going to be used in PHP.
Let's say I have a northwind database and I use ADO.NET Entity Data Model which I automatically generate from the tables in database. Then I add a new WCF data service that inherits from DataService. When I start the web application, that runs the service I can request data like this:
http://machine/Northwind.svc/Orders
This will return all orders from order table in atom/xml format. The problem is I do not want XML. I want JSON. I think I tried all kinds of settings (web.config) and attributes in my application, but I still get XML. No matter what. I can only get JSON, when I use fiddler and change the request header to accept JSON.
I do not like the concept of content negotiation. I want always to return data in JSON format. How can I achieve that?
Keep in mind that I did not create any model objects, they are automatically created based on database tables and relationships.
Well - content negotiation comes with HTTP. In any case, you could intercept the incoming request and add/overwrite the Accept header to always specify the JSON. There's a sample how to support JSONP which uses a similar trick, I think you should be able to modify it to always return JSON as well. http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/DataServicesJSONP.
The behavior you criticize is defined by specification of OData protocol. OData defaults to Atom and client can control media type of the representation either by Accept HTTP header or by $format parameter in query string (but I'm not sure if WCF Data services already support this).