H5.1 - REST Service - Introduction

The matchIT Hub Service Use Guide provides information for developers and integrators using matchIT Hub via the RESTful service addon. This document assumes the reader is familiar with the matchIT Hub API.

What is the matchIT Hub Service?

The matchIT Hub Service is an add-on for matchIT Hub that provides the same functionality but in the form of a service rather than an API. The Service is implemented in Java and, on Windows, comes with a Windows Service that runs automatically.

Communication with the service is via a RESTful API which supports all the same methods as the matchIT Hub API with the following additions:

• The equivalent of the Hub API applySettings() method allows settings to be applied as a string or by streaming a file
• The equivalent of the Hub API addData() method allows data to be added a single record at a time as a string or added multiple records at a time by streaming a whole delimited file
• The REST API has a "lookup" method that is equivalent to adding data to table 2 and repeatedly calling RESULTS/NEXT

What can the matchIT Hub Service be used for?

matchIT Hub Service provides a mechanism to hold a master table in memory whilst multiple clients perform lookups or multiple files are overlapped one after another.

The table can be kept up-to-date using the Add, Update and Delete methods.

What is REST?

REST is inspired by HTTP and plays to its strengths. HTTP based RESTful APIs are defined with these aspects:

• base URI, such as http://example.com/resources/
• an Internet media type for the data. This is often JSON but can be any other valid Internet media type (e.g. XML, Atom, microformats, images, etc.)
• standard HTTP methods (e.g., GET, PUT, POST, DELETE, etc)
• hypertext links to reference state
• hypertext links to reference related resources

Well designed RESTful services follow these guidelines:

• use the HTTP verbs (GET, PUT, POST) to mean something
• provide sensible resource names that use a collections metaphor
• use HTTP response codes to indicate status
• offer both JSON and XML response format

The resources of a RESTful service are viewed hierarchically via their URI names. The hierarchical nature is leveraged to imply structure. Resource names are typically nouns, not verbs. The HTTP method specifies the verb portion of a request.

Responses from the matchIT Hub Service are in JSON format.

If you have Postman, then you can import a Postman collection which is any easy way to try out the REST methods.  Note that there are 3 environment variables expected which you'll need to set up - serviceRoot, engine and activation. 

https://www.getpostman.com/collections/2f73bc11f42fac0844c3

For more details, please read the following - Postman Collection Explained