[Rt-devel] REST Interface

[Stefan Hornburg]

Jesse Vincent wrote:
> 
> 
> On Thu, Jan 17, 2008 at 02:01:50PM +0100, Stefan Hornburg wrote:
>> Hello, RT developers !
>>
>> At the German Perl Workshop in Erlangen next month I'll talking about 
>> automating and integrating RT through the REST interface 
>> (http://www.perl-workshop.de/talks/102/view).
> 
> Excellent. Are you aware of dams' RT Console client and the cpan library
> for working with the REST interface?
> 
> http://code.google.com/p/rt-client-console/

I looked at the CPAN library, but decided to roll my own code as the
complexity of the REST interface is moderate and integrating the
said module into Interchange (which is the whole purpose) needs
extra code anyway. But thanks for the hint, I'll factor them into
the paper / reference list.

>> rt help list says:
>>
>> (Right now, the server doesn't support listing anything but tickets.
>> Other types will be supported in future; this client will be able to
>> take advantage of that support without any changes.)
>>
>> Are there any plans to add this support ? 
> 
> It's not high on the list. We're hard at work on RT 3.8 which doesn't
> touch REST much and RT4, which leaves the existing RESTy interface in
> place but also exposes EVERY object via a proper REST interface (with
> json, xml, perl, yaml data transports and proper URLS)

Great.

> 
>> If not would you accept patches ?
> 
> YES! :)
> 
>> Besides that, the interface violates main principles of RESTfulness, like 
>> uniquely addressable and well defined operations. Just to let you know that
>> I'll cover these weaknesses :-).
> 
> In my defense, when the REST interface got designed, everyone else on
> the planet was just starting to use SOAP and Roy Fielding had barely
> published his definitions of what REST was. It wasn't well understood by
> anybody.  What I'd taken away from the discussion about what REST could
> be at the time was "access via simple GET and POST at simple, defined
> end points."  Were I doing it over today (as I am ;), I'd do it
> differently. 

I read that the REST stuff was introduced with RT3 and was ignorant of the
fact that it is ancient code.

Oh, and thanks for the terrific software. I just started about 9 months ago
for me and my customers and the feedback is really positive. Now to some
code that exports the time information from the various RT instances into
my billing ...

Regards
            Racke


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