Hi all
While I like and appreciate the new CWS documentation OpenText produced, for my money it doesn't quite cover what I generally need to know. Usually what I need to know is things like what a "ProcessSearchOptions" object looks like and how it is intended to be used. The API documentation is okay but sometimes difficult to follow for my tiny brain and it seems incomplete (though I've not spent much time with the new API docs, they don't seem to really have changed). So what I do is learn as I program using Powershell.
As Microsoft Powershell is an interpretive scripting language, it is possible to easily learn as you type. Virtually all IDEs that support Powershell (for instance the builtin PowershellIDE, PowerGUI, and Eclipse) provide automatic completion of Methods, interrogation of Objects and quite a bit of inline help. Thus what I do is "dot-source" a small script:
PS> . c:\scripts\setup-otwebservices.ps1
And then I have ready access to all of CWS, so I can find out about a web service function, method or property very easily, for instance:
PS> $dm | get-member
lists every single method and property associated with the docman web service.
But more importantly, you can interrogate objects directly as you are learning about them, for instance:
PS> $node=$dm.getnode(2000)PS> $node | get-member
and I am rewarded with a full listing of all properties and methods available to the $node object. And I can just keep digging into things to figure it out:
PS> $node.Permissions | get-member
Now you can, of course, do this in Java or C# but don't miss the point here, all those lines starting wtih "PS>" are part of a single Powershell command line session ... no compiling required, you can simply interrogate interactively. And if you want to experiment, who could ask for more than a command-line that recalls previous commands so you can change a property and retry a call with a flick of the cursor.
Whether or not Powershell is appropriate for your final application is open for discussion, however there is no better tool out there for learning about CWS and any other web service available.
