USER MANUALS

IDU Requests

Besides providing different representations of the data of the views, the RESTful Web service can execute Insert, Delete and Update (IDU) operations.

Note that to execute IDU operations over a view, the view has to be “updateable”. The section Inserts, Updates and Deletes Over Views of the VQL Guide explains when a view is “updateable”.

Following the RESTful conventions, the statement sent to Virtual DataPort by the Service, depends on the HTTP method of the request (see RESTful Web service: HTTP methods and their equivalent VQL statements).

The POST (INSERT) and PUT (UPDATE) requests have to contain the data that you want to insert in the view, in the body of the request. You can represent these data as a JSON or an XML document. Depending on the type of document, the HTTP Header Content-Type has to be either application/json or application/xml.

The XML document sent in the body of the requests has to meet the following conditions:

  • The name of the root element has to be the name of the view

  • If you want to set the value of a field to NULL, you have to define the xmlns:xsi=http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance namespace and add the attribute xsi:nil=true to the field (see RESTful Web service: POST request with XML body)

In both types of documents, the values of type date have to be expressed with the following format: yyyy-MM-dd'T'hh:mm:ssZ. E.g. “2005-06-29T17:19:41+0000”.

To execute a PUT (UPDATE) or DELETE request over a view, the view must have its primary key defined. That is because the row to update/delete is identified by the values of its primary key.

INSERT Queries (POST)

To execute an INSERT query over a view, you have to send a POST request to a URL that represents a view.

The syntax of the URL to execute INSERT queries is http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/<database name>/views/<view name>

E.g. http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc.

If the Service processes the request correctly, it returns the HTTP code 201 (“Created”). If the target view has primary key, the response will also include the HTTP header “Location” with an URL that points to the new row.


Below, there are two equivalent examples of a POST (INSERT) request. The first one sends the data in an XML document and the second one, in a JSON document.

Example 1 (XML)

URL = http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc

HTTP Method = POST

HTTP Header Accept = application/xml

HTTP Header Content-Type = application/xml

Body of the request:

RESTful Web service: POST request with XML body
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<internet_inc xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <iinc_id>2000</iinc_id>
    <summary>New incidence</summary>
    <taxid>B99999999</taxid>
    <specific_field1 xsi:nil="true" />
    <specific_field2 xsi:nil="true" />
</internet_inc>

By defining the namespace http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance and adding the attribute xsi:nil="true" to the specific_field1 and specific_field2 fields, their values will be NULL.

Also, note that the name of the root element is the name of the view we want to execute the INSERT query on.

Example 2 (JSON)

URL = http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc

HTTP Method = POST

HTTP Header Accept = application/json

HTTP Header Content-Type = application/json

Body of the request:

RESTful Web service: POST request with JSON body
{
    "iinc_id": 2000
  , "summary": "New incidence"
  , "taxid": "B99999999"
  , "specific_field1": null
  , "specific_field2": null
}

In both examples, when the Service receives this request, it executes the following query:

INSERT INTO internet_inc SET
      summary = 'New incidence'
    , iinc_id = 2000
    , specific_field1 = null
    , specific_field2 = null
    , taxid = 'B99999999';

UPDATE Queries (PUT)

To execute an UPDATE query over a view, you have to send a PUT request to a URL that represents a row of view (not a view).

The syntax of the URL to execute UPDATE queries is http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/<database name>/views/<view name>/<primary key values>

E.g. http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc/12

The final segment of the URL (12) is the value of the primary key, which in the view internet_inc is formed by the field IINC_ID. If the primary key is formed by more than one field, you have to put the values of each field separated by comma (,). Therefore, if any of the primary key values has this character, you have to replace it with %2C to avoid interpreting it as the separator of primary key values.

If the Service processes the request correctly, it returns the HTTP code 204 (“No content”).

As the Service uses the value of the primary key to identify the row that you want to update, the views without primary key cannot be updated from the RESTful Web service.


Below, there two equivalent examples of a PUT (UPDATE) request. The first one sends the data in an XML document and the second one, in a JSON document.

Example 1 (XML)

URL = http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc/2

HTTP Method = PUT

HTTP Header Accept = application/xml

HTTP Header Content-Type = application/xml

Body of the request:

RESTful Web service: PUT request with XML body
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<internet_inc xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
    <summary>Incident in ADSL router ...</summary>
</internet_inc>

Example 2 (JSON)

URL = http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc/2

HTTP Method = PUT

HTTP Header Accept = application/json

HTTP Header Content-Type = application/json

Body of the request:

RESTful Web service: PUT request with JSON body
{
  "summary": "Incident in ADSL router ..."
}

In both examples, when the Service receives this request, it executes the following query:

UPDATE internet_inc SET
    summary =  'Incident in ADSL router ...'
WHERE iinc_id = 2

The WHERE clause is formed by the field of the primary key (IINC_ID) and the value of the last segment of the URL (2).

DELETE Queries

To execute a DELETE query over a view, you have to send a DELETE request to a URL that represents a row of view (not a view).

The syntax of the URL to execute DELETE queries is http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/<database name>/views/<view name>/<primary key values>

E.g. http://localhost:9090/denodo-restfulws/admin/views/internet_inc/12.

In this example, the final segment of the URL (12) is the value of the primary key, which in the view internet_inc is formed by the field IINC_ID. As we have seen in the previous section, if the primary key is formed by more than one field, you have to put the values of each field separated by comma (,). Therefore, if any of the primary key values has this character, you have to replace it with %2C.

If the Service processes the request correctly, it returns the HTTP code 204 (“No content”).

As the Service uses the value of the primary key to identify the row that you want to delete, the views without primary key cannot be deleted from the RESTful Web service.

The difference with the DELETE requests and the POST and PUT ones, is that the body of the request is empty and you do not need to add the HTTP headers Accept nor Content-Type.

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