Re: Creating a REST API with RPGLE

Apache is pretty similar on all platforms.  the IBM i is a little
different, but honestly the one config in there is a basic one that you
should be able to decipher with a little research.

On Sat, Oct 8, 2022 at 10:50 AM <[email protected]> wrote:

> Thanks Brad.  It looks like you are pointing me to Apache which is where I
> figured I would end up based on the walls that I kept running into.
>
> Now the next question is can you point me to a good resource on setting up
> Apache?  You provided the config for the server but I have no idea where
> that goes.  When I looked at Apache config, many of the sites that I found
> assume that I knew things that I don't and consequently I was missing a key
> piece that caused me to fail.  I really need the "Apache config for
> dummies" book.
>
> Us newbies are such a pain sometimes. 😊
>
> As for the SQL, yes, there will definitely be safeguards in place.  I just
> didn’t figure it was worth the details but I appreciate your callout just
> in case I didn't know better.  I also learned years ago to protect the SQL
> so that someone doesn't enter a screen value such as "somevalue';delete
> from itemtable" to cause a multiple step statement such as
>
> update mytable set myfield = 'somevalue';delete from itemtable;  <= If you
> happen to have an itemtable, it is now empty.
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: WEB400 <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Brad Stone
> Sent: Saturday, October 8, 2022 9:43 AM
> To: Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) <[email protected]
> >
> Subject: Re: [WEB400] Creating a REST API with RPGLE
>
> I would suggest outputting JSON as it's more generic and most applications
> can read it.
>
> Here's a simple program and HTTP config that will do what you want using
> RPG and YAJL.. you just need to change the $Data subroutine to run your SQL
> statement, then build the JSON as it reads the results from the command:
>
> https://fieldexit.com/forum/display?threadid=522
>
> PS, passing in straight SQL can be very dangerous in the wrong hands, so I
> would put some sort of checking so there's not something like delete from
> lib.file passed in.
>
> On Fri, Oct 7, 2022 at 8:09 PM <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > First, let me say I am trying to do something here that I have zilch
> > experience with from the IBM i perspective.  I have done this type of
> > stuff using C#.Net on Windows but nothing on the IBM i.  Yesterday was
> > my first voyage into IBM Web Administration for i.
> >
> > That said, I am trying to create a REST API written in RPGLE that will
> > return JSON data.  I have looked at a lot of examples but just can't
> > find what I am after.
> >
> > This needs to be modeled after some existing C#.Net REST APIs so the
> > following requirements are not negotiable.
> >
> > The request needs to be a POST type.
> > The body of the POST request needs to have two "fields".
> >   1) Input - An SQL statement that will be used to retrieve the data.
> >   2) Output - The results of the SQL.  These results can be anything
> > so the fields can't be predefined in the RPGLE program's parameters
> > like they are in all of the examples that I find.  There can also be
> > multiple records so it would end up having an array in the results.  I
> > think I need a single "results" field that is pretty big and I will
> > need to manually build the JSON for it.
> >
> > I tried creating a new HTTP server and deploying a service to it.  I
> > have been successful using Scott's customer lookup as a model and I
> > have been able to do a few different things to experiment.  However, I
> > can't figure out how to handle the POST body for input or the array
> > results in the output.
> >
> > One attempt was to create the following:
> >        dcl-pi *n;
> >          sql char(5000);
> >          resultSet char(50000);
> >        end-pi;
> > The problem was that I got back a value in the resultSet that was
> > really junked up JSON because it escaped all of the " as \".  I
> > considered trying to make the resultSet value return as plain text
> > instead of JSON (I'm assuming I can do that somehow) but I decided
> > before I went too far down the wrong rabbit hole, I would ask for
> > help.
> >
> > Can someone help point me in a good direction?  I don't mind doing a
> > lot of web digging, I just don't really know what I need to search for
> > to do the digging.
> >
> > Thanks.
> >
> >
> > --
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> >
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