Revision as of 01:24, 2 May 2014

X2Engine's second-generation API, which is (for the most part) REST-ful, includes many improvements over the original API.

Introduction

This API within X2Engine, which can be accessed via the URI[[wikipedia:Uniform Resource Identifier]]: The part of a URL that identifies the resource on the server to be accessed. In the context of the API, this refers to the relative path within the web server based in the web root of X2Engine, i.e. ''index.php/api2/Contacts/324.json'' as opposed to the full URL, which begins with the protocol (i.e. "http") and might also contain a path relative to the web site's document root

 index.php/api2

exclusively uses JSON for data input and output, operates via HTTP/S requests, tends to use similar URIs for both input and output (distinguishing operations via the request method) and uses a variety of server response codes to distinguish error scenarios in the case of an unsuccessful transaction.

For example, to create a contact, one would send a POST request with its body a JSON-encoded attributes list to the URI[[wikipedia:Uniform Resource Identifier]]: The part of a URL that identifies the resource on the server to be accessed. In the context of the API, this refers to the relative path within the web server based in the web root of X2Engine, i.e. ''index.php/api2/Contacts/324.json'' as opposed to the full URL, which begins with the protocol (i.e. "http") and might also contain a path relative to the web site's document root

 index.php/api2/Contacts

with the Content-Type header set to application/json, and the request body as (for example):

{"firstName":"John","lastName":"Smith","visibility":1,"email":"johnsmith@example.com"}

If creation of the contact is successful, the server should respond with status code 201, and the response should contain a Location header with the full URL (including protocol) of the newly created contact (in addition to all the attributes of the new contact). If for example the new contact's ID is 123, that URI[[wikipedia:Uniform Resource Identifier]]: The part of a URL that identifies the resource on the server to be accessed. In the context of the API, this refers to the relative path within the web server based in the web root of X2Engine, i.e. ''index.php/api2/Contacts/324.json'' as opposed to the full URL, which begins with the protocol (i.e. "http") and might also contain a path relative to the web site's document root would be index.php/api2/Contacts/123.json, and a GET request to that URI[[wikipedia:Uniform Resource Identifier]]: The part of a URL that identifies the resource on the server to be accessed. In the context of the API, this refers to the relative path within the web server based in the web root of X2Engine, i.e. ''index.php/api2/Contacts/324.json'' as opposed to the full URL, which begins with the protocol (i.e. "http") and might also contain a path relative to the web site's document root would elicit a response from the server whose body contains a JSON-encoded list of attributes.

Prerequisites

When utilizing the API it is thus required or highly recommended that your language/coding environment of choice:

• Have a JSON parsing and encoding library available
• Have a library for making HTTP requests which can:
  • Set request headers
  • Parse response headers and read the response status code
  • Read responses even when the response code is not in the "success" category (2xx)
  • Make POST, PATCH/PUT and DELETE requests
• Can access the network

Many high-level languages, such as Perl, PHP, Python and Ruby, meet these requirements. The specific usage of these languages is beyond the scope of this article; you will need to refer to the documentation of the library/libraries used in writing applications with the X2Engine API.