• Introduction
• Details
• URL Structure
• Format
• Project Data
• Person Data
• Retrieve a Single Person
• Alternative Data Sources
• Securing

Introduction

This page describes the Simal REST API. Note that by default the REST API is accessible by anyone. If you wish to secure it your only option, at the time of writing, is to use .htaccess see below for more details.

Details

URL Structure

All REST URLs are of the same form:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/COMMAND/NAME_VALUE_PAIRS/FORMAT

Where COMMAND is the command you wish to execute, NAME_VALUE_PAIRS is zero or more parameter names and value pairs and FORMAT is a format code that specifies the format of the response document.

NAME_VALUE_PAIRS take the form of name-value. For example, to provide a project identifier you would use something like project-prj126. Name value pairs can be provided in any order.

Format

Currently, only json and xml are supported as valid data FORMATs.

Project Data

Add a project

To add a project using a DOAP POST to:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/addProject

The RDF project data should be contained in a parameter called rdf .

Retrieve a Single Project

To retrieve the details of a single project use:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/project/project-ID/FORMAT

Where ID is the project identifier and FORMAT is an approved format.

Retrieve a featured project

By calling the method to retrieve a single project with an ID of "featured" you will retrieve a single featured project.

All Projects

To retrieve all projects from the standard SIMAL repository use:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/allProjects/FORMAT

Person Data

Retrieve a Single Person

To retrieve the details of a single person use:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/person/person-ID/FORMAT

Where ID is the person identifier and FORMAT is an approved format.

All Colleagues of a Person

A colleague is defined as someone who works on any of the projects our target person works on.

To retrieve all colleagues from the standard SIMAL repository use:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/allColleagues/person-ID/FORMAT

Where ID is replaced with the Simal ID of the person we are interested in.

Retrieve all People

To retrieve the details of all people use:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/allPeople/FORMAT

Alternative Data Sources

Simal can retrieve data from sources other than the standard Simal repository. Such as the MyExperiment social networking tool for scientific research. In order to use alternative data sources use the "source" parameter as follows:

http://foo.com/simal-rest/allColleagues/source-myExperiment/PERSON-ID/FORMAT

Securing

At present there are no security features for the REST API, therefore, if you need to lock it down then you need to use .htaccess. For example, in httpd.conf add:

ProxyPass /simal-rest !

To block all direct access to port 8080:

iptables -A INPUT -j DROP -p tcp --destination-port 8080 -i eth0