REST API

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Revision as of 02:34, 23 May 2009 by Scott (talk | contribs) (basic structure)
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The Directed Edge REST API is a fairly simple way of modeling a collection of items and the relationships between them. These relationships are used as the basis for finding similar items or delivering personalized recommendations to a user. Information is encoded using our XML Format using notions from the API Concepts.

REST APIs allow for using the HTTP methods GET, PUT, POST and DELETE on various resources. We'll explain below which of these are allowed.

Let's have a look at an example URL:

https://username:password@webservices.directededge.com/api/v1/wikipedia/

This is the URL for the wikipedia database. Many of the elements are constant — notably the host name, and the api/v1 sections. We'll break down the other components in the following sections.

HTTP and HTTPS

API Authentication

Database resource

HTTP GET

HTTP PUT

Item resource

HTTP GET

HTTP PUT

HTTP DELETE

Add and remove sub-resources

HTTP PUT

Related / recommended resources

HTTP GET

Query Parameters