Library Information System: REST Web Service

Resources

This table provides a list of all the resources exposed by this REST web service:

Resource	Methods	Description
Session	GET	This resource returns a unique session id that needs to get passed to the other requests
Author	GET	This resource contains information on authors in the library catalog
Book	GET , POST , PUT , DELETE	This resource contains information on books in the library catalog
Book Image	POST

Accessing Services

To access these REST web services, you need to use the following base URL:

https://libraryinformationsystem.org/services/RestService.svc/

You can specify the format of data that will be returned (XML or JSON) by passing the following HTTP Headers:

Content-Type: application/xml - Sends data in XML format
accept: application/xml - Returns data in XML format
Content-Type: application/json - Sends data in JSON format
accept: application/json - Returns data in JSON format

To authenticate with the web service there are two methods:

Pass in the username and password using the standard HTTP basic authentication header:

                            Authorization: Basic XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
                            where XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX is username:password base64 encoded

Append the username and password as an extra querystring parameter:

                            ?username=librarian&password=librarian

Finally if you need to call one of the GET methods from a web page in another domain you need to use the special JSONP (JSON with Padding) syntax. This tells the web service to return the data in the form of a JavaScript <script> tag so that it be can be called across web site domains safely. To request the data in JSONP format, just add the following extra querystring parameter:

                    ?callback=[name of callback function]

Session

URI	Method	Description
session	GET	Returns the unique session id that is used to prevent different user's requests getting mixed up

Author

URI	Method	Description
author/{id}?session_id={session_id}	GET	Retrieves a single author by its id
author?session_id={session_id}	GET	Retrieves the list of users in the system for the current user's session

Book

URI	Method	Description
book/{id}?session_id={session_id}	GET	Retrieves a single book by its id
book/{id}?session_id={session_id}	PUT	Updates an existing book in the system
book/{id}?session_id={session_id}	DELETE	Deletes an existing book in the system
book/search?session_id={session_id}	POST	Retrieves a list of books by a date range
book?session_id={session_id}	GET	Retrieves a list of books in the system
book?session_id={session_id}	POST	Adds a new book to the system

Book Image

URI	Method	Description
book/{id}/image	POST	Uploads a file and returns the byte count