API - best practice

Eidelman_Daniel

Hi,

Is I can see we can connect to OTCS\OTDS with REST API or web service.

What is the prefer way to do that in terms of long distance support, backwards compatibility and functionality.

Are there any functionality that I can get with REST API but not through web service?

Appu Nair

@Eidelman_Daniel

I do not work for OT and the views are mine until you get a better OT response.

Here's an old thread but valuable in your research

https://knowledge.opentext.com/knowledge/llisapi.dll?func=ll&objId=58440404&objAction=viewincontainer

There was a better document by OT at one time which I cannot find now that detailed the use cases. In my line of work and experienced, I have used all 3 of them by far as the new kid on the block so feature parity may not exist. So if your intentions were developing SPA's and cloudy stuff REST may be your best bet.B2B may be best served by SOAP as many of the XECM offerings are written to support ECMLink which gives superior services than its new REST counterpart.

Lastly, OTDS and OTCS are two different products and code bases . The OTCS Directory Integration of yesteryears redone using OTDS(OpenLDAP). It is the IDP of OT.OTCS will have its authentication so. For authentication, it is better OTDS for initial and then switch to the ticket that a REST API of OTCS gives to keep the chain alive.https://forums.opentext.com/forums/developer/discussion/comment/958471#Comment_958471

I will try to answer this differently....

Are there any functionality that I can get with REST API but not through web service?

OK so you are on a project and your manager says we need to create an N number of categories for our Project. You look at swagger and lo and behold you see a Category PUT/POST call you to code it but how does one add the attributes? H'mmm that call seems to be not implemented by OT. So in reality when an OLD API dies OT or any company will look at what is the minimum viable product so people will be tempted to use it so If there was an esoteric usage of old features you might not find it in the newer things. This happened when LAPI was retired for SOAP and slowly SOAP is not getting new features :) so for the foreseeable future SOAP will stay put while REST will get newer and newer features...

Karen Weir

Thank you @Appu Nair !

@Eidelman_Daniel , If the link Appu provided does not work for you, please try this one:

https://forums.opentext.com/forums/developer/discussion/281847/use-of-lapi-vs-content-web-services-vs-rest-api

Matthew_Pinkney

I would recommend going with the REST API as we are only adding features there. Web Services is still supported but we are only fixing bugs in it. There is definitely functionality in REST that is not in web services.

If you find the REST API is missing something you need that was in web services, please raise a ticket with support.