What is REST?

REST (an abbreviation of Representational State Transfer) is a set of communications protocols used for accessing and manipulating data over the internet. The user requests a resource (data) via a URL and a representation of the resource is returned (e.g. an XML document). There is a set of defined rules on how data in REST requests can be structured, e.g. as XML or JSON and what can be done to the data, enabling it to be retrieved, saved / created, updated and deleted. For REST calls in iVectorConnect, users will only ever be retrieving data.

For more detail about REST and RESTful requests, see this entry in our glossary.

How is REST used with iVectorConnect?

If extended content is supported in your system, the REST architectural style is used to allow you to access the data set up in your system via simple URLs. For example you can get lists of properties, airports, languages and so on in XML format by going to the URLs detailed below.

Basic Format

Content is available through the following URL

    http://[YourURL].ivectorconnect.co.uk

via the following REST data retrieval calls:

For example, to find out all object types that can be retrieved through rest calls you might visit http://testtravel.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/list

Modifiers

The following query string modifiers can be used with all the above requests

For example, to find out all object types that can be retrieved through REST calls, you might visit http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/list.

Examples

List

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/list

Response

<ObjectTypes>

<ObjectType>BookingSettings</ObjectType>

<ObjectType>CMS_ImageRotatorImages</ObjectType>

<ObjectType>Extra</ObjectType>

<ObjectType>Property</ObjectType>

</ObjectTypes>

Single Object

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/property/1

Response

<Property/>

Multiple Objects

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/property/215,216,3455

Response

<Property>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

</Property>

All Objects

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/property/all

Response

<Property>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

<Property/>

</Property>

List of Object Ids

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/property/list

Response

<PropertyList>

<PropertyID>1</PropertyID>

<PropertyID>2</PropertyID>

</PropertyList>

URL

URL

http://demo.ivectorconnect.co.uk/cms/url

Response

<URLContent>

<ObjectType>Property</ObjectType>

<ID>1745</ID>

<URL/>

<ContentXML/>

</URLContent>

Notes

Highlighted functionality is not in the main code branch yet.