I am somewhat new to RESTful APIs.
I'm trying to implement a python system that will control various tasks across multiple computers, with one computer acting as the controller.
I would like all these tasks to be divided amongst multiple users (ex. task foo runs as user foo, and task bar runs as user bar) while handling all requests with a central system. The central system should also act as a simple web server and be able to server basic pages for status purposes.
It it possible to have each user register a "page" with a central server for the API and have the server pass all requests to the programs (probably written in Python)?
Sure, you just need the clients to POST their notifications URL to the server, so that the server can then POST them back with the requests. These are called Webhooks by some people.
Also see RESTful Webhooks.
Yes. Keep in mind that being RESTful is merely a way to organize your web application's URL's in a standard way. You can build your web application to do whatever you want.
Related
I'm currently working on a University project that needs to be implemented with a Client - Server model.
I had experiences in the past where I was managing the communication at socket level and that really sucked.
I was wondering if someone could suggest an easy to use python framework that I can use for that purpose.
I don't know what kind of details you may need to answer so I'm just going to describe the project briefly.
Communication should happen over HTTP, possibly HTTPS.
The server does not need to send data back or invoke methods on the clients, it just collects data
Many clients send data concurrently to server, who needs to distinguish the sender, process the data accordingly and put the result in a database.
You can use something like Flask or Django. Both frameworks are fairly easy to implement, Flask is much easier than Django IMO, although Django has a built in authentication layer that you can use, albeit more difficult to implement in a client/server scenario like you need.
I would personally use Flask and JWT (JSON Web Tokens), which will allow you to give a token to each client for authentication with the server, which will also let you differentiate between clients, and you can use HTTPS for your SSL/TLS requirement. It is tons easier to implement this, and although I like django better for what it brings to the table, it is probably overkill to have you learn it for a single assignment.
For Flask with SSL, here is a quick rundown of that.
For JWT with Flask, here is that.
You can use any database system you would like.
If I understood you correctly you can use any web framework in python. For instance, you can use Flask (I use it and I like it). Django is also a popular choice among the python web frameworks. However, you shouldn't be limited to only these two. There are plenty of them out there. Just google for them.
The implementation of the client depends on what kind of communication there will be between the clients and the server - I don't have enough details here. I only know it's unidirectional.
The client can be a browser accessing you web application written in Flask where users send only POST requests to the server. However, even here the communication will bidirectional (the clients need to open the page which means the server sends requests back to the client) and it violates your initial requirement.
Then it can be a specific client written in python sending some particular requests to your server over http/https. For instance, your client can use a requests package to send HTTP requests.
I am currently working on a project where we need to establish communication like an ESB, between a REST API and the apps services on a small scale.
Scenario:
Assume a web app front end (e.g. Django/Python or Ruby/Rails) and services that are accessible via a HTTP RESTful request.
How can I:
make it configurable which web services are called on a web request depending on the request and not requiring code changes (through keys for example)
encapsulate or implement the services in a way to make it easy to manage them e.g. start/stop etc.
I have been looking at spring.io, but cant work out whether this could be used for the this??
I am open to all suggestions,
Thanks
From what I understand, you want an authorisation solution.
In Rails, Pundit and CanCanCan are very popular. You could also implement it from scratch. Here is a screencast to help you get started.
What are the implications of using webservices or message queues in an application?
In my case, I need to connect a Django web application with a python application, and I need two way communication between these applications. Sometimes the web app sends request to the python app to activate a few hardware devices, and sometimes the python app needs to be generally queried to obtain data.
The issue my entire application depends on instantaneous data received or sent to the python core application, so I cannot afford to waste system resources on querying everytime. I need to use something like a listener/receiver to send/receive data, without manually triggering a query every few seconds.
I am using Django for web application framework and Python for my core application.
I already have ZMQ being used internally for multiagent communication platform. If it is message queue, all I need to do is just connect to it, and send and receive data.
If it is a webservice, I need to freshly integrate the webservices. Again, what is the preferred method to create a webservice using Python?
I'm using Django/Postgres and Python for my web site and the background processes. I have hundreds of messages every minute populating my database and I would like to securely allow other customers access their data.
My customers use either linux or windows so I would like some solution that will be platform/database agnostic.
I looked so far at Piston , Twisted , Celery and RabbitMQ. All these have some way to exchange data. But I'm not sure what to use or if there are any better options.
For example I need the customers to be able to access only their data on my database. Another thing I need is to allow the customers to send a short command back to my servers. My servers will execute the command and return re result in real time back to the customer.
Any ideas?
You asked how your customers can securely transmit commands to your website and retrieve results in their response (near "real-time").
... have you considered hooking a reasonable API into your django app? If you're concerned about security, you can use authentication and serve it over HTTPS.
It's not as fancy as the messaging and queuing platforms that the kids are using these days but it'll get the job done.
Things to like about HTTP/HTTPS APIs:
They can be load balanced (highly available and scalable!)
They can be cached (mo' betta performance and the ability to still serve content while rate limiting how often a client can hit the DB)
Just about every programming language has a mature library that allows HTTP/HTTPS connections. Some have multiple, e.g. Python: urllib,urllib2,httplib
I have a Python-driven web interface powered by Apache 2.2 with mod_python and Python 2.4. I need to make an asynchronous process appear synchronous to users of this web interface.
When users access one module on this website:
An external SOAP interface will be contacted with a unique identifier and will respond with a number N
The external interface will respond asynchronously by contacting a SOAP server on my machine between 1 and 10 times (the number N tells us how many responses we will receive)
I need to somehow aggregate these responses and pass them to the original module which will display the information back to the user. The goal is to make the process appear synchronous to the user.
What is the best way to handle this synchronization issue? Is this something Twisted would be well-suited for?
I am not restricting myself to Python for the solution, though it is preferred because everything else on the server is in Python. I prefer a solution that is both scalable and will take a minimal amount of programming time (though I understand that these attributes are somewhat at odds).
Maybe you can use Orbited to get ajax push with long-lived HTTP connections to your web clients. Orbited is based on Twisted, so I think it makes sense to look at if you already know Twisted. Have a look at this tutorial to get started.