Exposing a Service as a Web Service

Spectrum Technology Platform services can be made available as RESTful and SOAP web services. To make a service available on your server as a web service:

  1. Open Spectrum Enterprise Designer.
  2. Open the service that you want to expose as a web service.
  3. Go to Edit > Web Service Options.
  4. To make the service available as a SOAP web service, check the box Expose as SOAP web service.
  5. To make the service available as a REST web service, check the box Expose as REST web service and complete these steps.
    1. If you want to override the default endpoint, specify the endpoint you want to use in the Path field.

      Specifying a path is optional. By default, a REST web service's endpoint is:

      http://server:port/rest/service_name/results.qualifier

      If you want to use a different endpoint, the path you specify is added after the service name. For example, if you specify Americas/Shipping in the Path field, your JSON endpoint would be something like this:

      http://myserver:8080/rest/MyService/Americas/Shipping/results.json

      You can use fields and options from the flow as variable names in the path by clicking the Insert variable drop-down menu and selecting the field or option you want to use. The variable is represented in the path using the notation ${Option.Name} for flow options and ${Data.Name} for flow fields.

    2. By default REST web services support the GET method and return data in XML and JSON formats. You can define additional HTTP methods and output formats by clicking Add to add a resource to the web service.
      When you add a resource, you can choose the HTTP method (GET or POST). The supported data formats are listed below. You may not have all these formats available to you because some formats are only available if you have certain modules installed on your Spectrum Technology Platform server.
      XML
      The default XML format. Use this format if you want to use XML as the format for requests and responses, and there is no specialized XML format for the kind of data you want to process.
      JSON
      The default JSON format. Use this format if you want to use JSON as the format for requests and responses, and there is no specialized JSON format for the kind of data you want to process.
      GeoJSON
      A specialized JSON format that is appropriate for services that handle geographic data. Support is provided only for Geometry and for these native platform types:
      • boolean
      • double
      • float
      • integer
      • bigdecimal
      • long
      • string
      • date
      • time
      • datetime
      • timespan

      If you try to expose a flow with any other type, you will not be able to specify GeoJSON (an error will appear at design-time). Also, GeoJSON only allows a single geometry. If the output contains multiple geometry fields, the system will search for a field called "geometry" followed by a field called "obj." If those fields do not exist, the first geometry field will be selected.

    3. Click OK.

      The new resource is added to the web service.

  6. Click OK when you are done configuring the web service options.
  7. Click the gray light bulb in the tool bar to expose the service.

    When a flow is exposed the light bulb button in the Spectrum Enterprise Designer tool bar indicates that the flow is exposed as shown here:

To verify that the service is now exposed as a web service, go to one of the following URLs:
  • For REST: http://server:port/rest
  • For SOAP: http://server:port/soap

Where server is the name or IP address of your Spectrum Technology Platform server and port is the port used for HTTP communication.