Re: Creating a REST API with RPGLE

Because if the data resides on the IBM i... RPG and the Apache server with
YAJL are really the easiest way to do it.  :)

On Sat, Oct 8, 2022 at 1:33 PM Richard Schoen <richard-DiTrGpQEJGItADg8e/3/[email protected]>
wrote:

> Out of curiosity is there a reason you can't still use C# ?
>
> Web apps and web apis done in C# and hosted on Windows or Linux are quite
> usable as well and can interact with your RPG via ODBC database calls and
> the IBMi Access ODBC driver.
>
> You also have things like Java, Python, Node and PHP available.
>
> Another interesting option if you want to create an RPG web service is
> ILEAstic.
>
> You have options.
>
> Regards,
> Richard Schoen
> Web: http://www.richardschoen.net
> Email: richard-DiTrGpQEJGItADg8e/3/[email protected]
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> message: 1
> date: Fri, 7 Oct 2022 20:54:11 -0400
> from: [email protected]
> subject: [WEB400] Creating a REST API with RPGLE
>
> 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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