Tutorial: Web Interfaces - POST

Information

• The following workflow provides basic knowledge required to create an interface in PLANTA Project using the functions delivered.
• The objective of this workflow is to create a web interface which creates new tasks.

Requirements

• Basic customizing knowledge
• Basic knowledge of REST

Notes

• To be able to use web interfaces you have to activate and configure the PLANTA link webservices in the web.conf:
  • generic_service = true
  • generic_service_interface and generic_service_port contain meaningful data
• If you have not activated the webservices, the buttons for carrying out different actions which require webservices will not be displayed.
• Web interfaces use the Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) as an address by default. If the FQDN is not available, the host name of the machine will be used. If the host name is not available either, the IP of the machine will be used. An explicit host name can be defined using the global planta_link_hostname setting.

All fields in the web interface modules are case sensitive (observe upper/lower case spelling)!

Create Web Entity

Objective

• To create a web entity which describes our data

Procedure

• Open the Configuration panel.
• Insert a new entity in the Web Entities submodule
  • via the Insert→ Web entity menu entry or
  • by clicking on the Insert button.
• Specify a name and select table 463 in the Data table field.
• Insert three web attributes via the Insert→ Web attribute context menu entry of the newly created web entity:
  • DI001097 Project ID with the name project
  • DI000807 Task name with the name name
  • DI008851 ID: parent task with the name parent
• Save.

Create Web Interface

Objective

• To create a web interface which processes incoming requests and creates our tasks

Procedure

• Open the Configuration panel.
• Create a new web interface
  • via the Insert→ Web interface menu entry or
  • by clicking on the Insert button.
• Fill the fields as follows:
  • The name is arbitrary.
  • The Active field must be activated before the interface is used.
  • Create a placeholder in the Url field, for example /task.
  • Allocate an API key.
  • Select the DefaultServiceImplementation POST implementation.
  • The entity which was newly created in the previous step is selected in the Web entity field.

Test Web Interface

Objective

• To test the newly created web interface

Procedure

• Click on the button to open the Test Web Interface module.
• Select POST as HTTP-method.
• Answer the query whether a template is to be copied in with Yes.
• Configure project 4711 for the URL filter.
  • To create the record correctly, the technical ID of the project must be determined. In this case: 000008.
• Fill the copied template as follows:
  • {"project": "000008", "name": "Summary task", "parent": ""}
• Click on the Execute button.
  • The placeholder in the URL is automatically replaced by the transferred value and the API key is passed on in the HTTP header.
• As a response to a successful query, the server responds with the automatic numbers of the created record as follows.
  • {"task_id": "12"}
• The ID can be used for another query with the following Request:
  • {"project": "000008", "name": "Task", "parent": "12"}
• If the schedule of the project is opened now, it contains two new structured tasks.