Re: Creating a REST API with RPGLE

Have you checked out integrated web services server[1]?  Designed to externalize ILE programs/service programs as APIs. Check out the parts 1, 2, 3 of the following articles to get some experience.

[1] https://www.ibm.com/support/pages/node/633935

[2] https://developer.ibm.com/tutorials/i-rest-web-services-server1/


---------------------------------------------------
Nadir Amra
e-mail: amra-r/[email protected]

From: WEB400 <[email protected]> on behalf of [email protected] <[email protected]>
Date: Friday, October 7, 2022 at 8:09 PM
To: 'Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries)' <[email protected]>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [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.


--
This is the Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: [email protected]
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at https://archive.midrange.com/web400  .
-- 
This is the Web Enabling the IBM i (AS/400 and iSeries) (WEB400) mailing list
To post a message email: [email protected]
To subscribe, unsubscribe, or change list options,
visit: https://lists.midrange.com/mailman/listinfo/web400
or email: [email protected]
Before posting, please take a moment to review the archives
at https://archive.midrange.com/web400.