RestfulClient

RestfulClient is an interface which provides facilities to communicate with RESTful web services. RestfulClient differs from RestfulSession in that it must be provided with RESTful endpoint URIs and request data, whereas the latter is integrated into the ORM and abstracts this information out so that a web service can be consumed using domain objects. While RestfulSession is geared towards communicating with a repository web service, RestfulClient is designed to simplify communication with any RESTful service, external API or otherwise.

Unlike RestfulMappingClient, which provides a high-level REST client, RestfulClient provides "raw" web service responses in the form of a RestResponse.

Using a RestfulClient

Infinitum provides an implementation of RestfulClient called CachingEnabledRestfulClient. Unlike RestfulSession, there is no configuration needed to use RestfulClient — simply instantiate it and begin making web requests!

RestfulClient rest = new CachingEnabledRestfulClient(context);

// HTTP GET request
RestResponse response = rest.executeGet("http://localhost/mywebservice/foo/42");

// HTTP DELETE request
response = rest.executeDelete("http://localhost/mywebservice/foo/42");

// HTTP POST request
String someJson = "{\"id\":\"328\",\"val\":\"42\"}";
response = rest.executePost("http://localhost/mywebservice/foo", someJson, "application/json");

// HTTP PUT request
someJson = "{\"id\":\"328\",\"val\":\"76\"}";
response = rest.executePut("http://localhost/mywebservice/foo", someJson, "application/json");

We can also apply headers to our requests:

Map<String, String> headers = new HashMap<String, String>();
headers.put("Accept", "text/xml");
response = rest.executeGet("http://localhost/mywebservice/foo/42", headers);

Additionally, connection and response timeouts can be configured for the RestfulClient:

rest.setConnectionTimeout(5000);
rest.setResponseTimeout(5000);

Lastly, RestfulClient can make use of an AuthenticationStrategy to simplify the process of creating authorized requests to a web service.

rest.setAuthStrategy(myAuthStrategy);