Get Started¶
Introduction¶
This section is an introduction to the use of Restful APIs in IFS Cloud integration scenarios. Before exploring the different operations that can be performed on the APIs and trying out a few basic use cases, it is important to have an understanding on the protocol that is used for API calls and the API Explorer options in the IFS cloud that enables access to the IFS Rest APIs.
OData¶
An application programming interface (API) allows applications to talk to each other. In our context API is implemented as a REST API and the technical protocol used is the Open Data Protocol (OData) due to which we can use standard HTTP methods (GET, POST, PUT, PATCH, DELETE) to call the API.
OData views data as a set of entities each having its own properties that can be filtered by using query options. The relationship between these entities are shown using the entity data model.
IFS OData Provider exposes IFS business entities and business logics through OData endpoints which is known as IFS OData service or IFS REST API.
API Explorer¶
The API Explorer facilitates developers to discover IFS REST APIs as OpenAPI specifications and OData specifications in the JSON format. Each of these specifications describe available endpoints, operation parameters, authentication methods, API Usage Policy as well as the API Class. More details about OpenAPI specifications can be found here.
Developers can use these APIs to create new applications or connect existing applications with IFS Cloud without having to invest development time from scratch.
API Explorer makes the APIs easily discoverable and allows integration developers to explore the APIs availabe to work with IFS Cloud. It also generates API specification URLs in OData and OpenAPI formats. The OpenAPI specification is used as the source to view Documentation for a given API. This API Documentation can be viewed for each API listed in the API Explorer.