1. RESTful Web Services
in Drupal 7

2. RESTful Web Services in Drupal 7
‣ Web Services introduction
‣ Why REST?
‣ The Bricks: Drupal 7, Entity API, RESTful Web Services
‣ Connector (REST client)
‣ Let’s go coding...
‣ Case Study
‣ Questions?

3. Web services
SOAP,
Service XML-RPC,
Service
Requester REST, etc... Provider

4. Web services with Drupal
REST
Service Service
Requester Provider

5. Why REST?
‣ Use standard HTTP (simple client and simple API)
‣ Multiple data formats (JSON, XML, etc...)
‣ Performance and scalability (Cacheable)

6. The bricks
Connector REST RESTws
Drupal 6
or Entity API
Drupal 7
Service Drupal 7
Requester
Service
Provider

7. Entity API
This module extends the entity API of Drupal
core in order to provide a unified way to
deal with entities and their properties.
Additionally, it provides an entity CRUD
controller, which helps simplifying the
creation of new entity types.
http://drupal.org/project/entity

8. RESTful Web Services
Exposes Drupal resources (e.g. entities) as RESTful web services.
‣ Provides only RESTful services.
‣ Builds upon the Entity API, to provide support for all entity types out of the
box.
‣ Currently only CRUD operations supported
‣ Currently JSON, XML and RDF/XML are available out of the box.
‣ There are no "service endpoints" to configure as resources are just available
at uniform paths like "node/1", "user/1".
http://drupal.org/project/restws

9. RESTful Web Services: Test it!
To obtain the JSON representation of an entity use your
browser to visit:
http://yoursite.com/node/1.json or
http://yoursite.com/user/1.json or
http://yoursite.com/<entity type name>/<entity id>.json
Note: The module will respect your access permissions, so make sure you are logged in.

10. RESTful Web Services: CRUD
Supports full CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) for resources:
‣ Create: HTTP PUT /<entity type name>
(requires HTTP Content-Type header set to the MIME type of <format>)
‣ Read: HTTP GET /<entity type name>/<entity id>.<format>
or HTTP GET /<entity type name>/<entity id>
(requires HTTP Accept header set to the MIME type of <format>)
‣ Update: HTTP POST /<entity type name>/<entity id>.<format>
or HTTP POST /<entity type name>/<entity id>
(requires HTTP Content-Type header set to the MIME type of the posted format)
‣ Delete: HTTP DELETE /<entity type name>/<entity id>
Note: The representation <format> can be json, xml etc.

11. RESTful Web Services: Auth and Perms
can be achieved via separate modules, maybe making use of
‣ Authentication
the standard Drupal cookie and session handling.
‣ The module comes with an optional HTTP Basic Authentication module
(restws_auth_basic) that performs a user login with the credentials provided
via the usual HTTP headers.
‣ Theusual Drupal permission system is respected, thus permissions are
checked for the logged in user account of the received requests.

12. Connector: REST Client

13. Connector: Example (webform hook)

14. Connector: Example (response)

15. Case Study
REST
Pamm Travel Tikal
(Drupal 6) (Drupal 7)
Service Service
Requester Provider

16. Case Study
REST
Intersos Tikal
(Drupal 6) (Drupal 7)
Service Service
Requester Provider

17. Questions?
http://bmeme.com
Luca Corbo (lucor) Daniele Piaggesi (g0blin)
luca.corbo@bmeme.com daniele.piaggesi@bmeme.com
@lucacorbo @g0blin79