REST API¶
This section will discuss the GeoWebCache REST API.
Formats and representations¶
A format specifies how a resource should be represented. A format is used:
- In an operation to specify what representation should be returned to the client
- In a POST or PUT operation to specify the representation being sent to the server
In a GET operation the format can be specified in a number of ways. The first is
with the Accepts header. For instance setting the header to “text/xml” would
specify the desire to have the resource returned as XML. The second method of
specifying the format is via file extension. For example consider the resource
“foo”. To request a representation of foo as XML the request uri would end with
“foo.xml”. To request as JSON the request uri would end with “foo.json”. When no
format is specified the server will use its own internal format, usually html.
In a POST or PUT operation the format specifies 1) the representatin of the
content being sent to the server, and 2) the representation of the resposne to
be sent back. The former is specified with the Content-type header. To send
a representation in XML, the content type “text/xml” or “application/xml” would
be used. The latter is specified with the Accepts header as specified in the
above paragraph describing a GET operation.
The following table defines the Content-type values for each format:
| Format | Content-type |
|---|---|
| XML | text/xml |
| JSON | application/json |
| HTML | application/html |
Authentication¶
POST, PUT, and DELETE requests (requests that modify resources) require the client to be authenticated. Currently the only supported method of authentication is Basic authentication.
Status codes¶
A Http request uses a status code to relay the outcome of the request to the
client. Different status codes are used for various purposes through out this
document. These codes are described in detail by the http specification.