Using REST and Freemarker to Build Components

“let’s make something”

“I want to show the most recent blog article and when it was posted”

Ok, no problem. First get the message from REST. /topics/style/blog/recent?page_size=1And assign that to a freemarker variable

<#assign recent= rest(“/topics/style/blog/recent?page_size=1”).messages />

“No,wait! I only want it to come from my blog. It’s called “Bloggy” and it’s

the best

Still no problem. We’ll just change our REST call to be specific to one board.<#assign recent = rest(“/boards/id/bloggy/topics/recent?page_size=1”).messages />

http://lithosphere.lithium.com/restapi/vc/boards/id/lithiumblog/topics/recent?page_size=1

“What’s that ‘/restapi/vc’ thing?

If you want to see your pure xml response in the browser you need to have “restapi/vc” in the url. If you are making the call in Freemarker, we take care of that part for you.

This:http://lithosphere.lithium.com/restapi/vc/boards/id/lithiumblog/topics/recent?page_size=1

Is the same as this:<#assign myCall = rest(“/boards/id/lithiumblog/topics/recent?page_size=1”) />

Now let’s write out our article title and date

<a href=“${recent.message.@view_href}”> ${recent.message.subject}</a> <span class=“post-time”>${recent.message.post_time}</span>

“What kind of date is that?? I can’t read that!”

Welcome to Bloggy 2013-11-18T17:34:08+00:00

Good point, you can get more user friendly info by adding a parameter to your rest call?restapi.response_style=view

<#assign recent = rest(“/boards/id/bloggy/topics/recent?page_size=1&restapi.response_style=view”).messages />

This changes the response for post time from this:<post_time type="date_time">2013-11-18T17:34:08+00:00</post_time>

To this:<post_time type="date_time" view_date="12-02-2013" view_time="11:13 AM" view_friendly_date="yesterday">2013-12-02T19:13:12+00:00</post_time>

Now we have:

<a href=“${recent.message.@view_href}”> ${recent.message.subject}</a> <span class=“post-time”>${recent.message.post_time.@view_friendly_date}</span>

Welcome to Bloggy Yesterday

Yay, I love it. Let’s test it!

Aaahhhhhh!

What Happened?

We used @view_friendly_date without ever checking that it existed.

“FIX IT!!”<a href=“${recent.message.@view_href}”> ${recent.message.subject}</a> <span class=“post-time”><#if recent.message.post_time.@view_friendly_date[0]??> ${recent.message.post_time.@view_friendly_date}<#else> ${recent.message.post_time.@view_date}</#if></span>

Gives you:

“Yay, it’s perfect”

Happy Dance

Tips for Development

• Always check the XML first• Test for variables before you use them.

De-FENCE, De-FENCE!• Test as both an admin user and a regular user

- permissions will kill you –• “unit test” • Versions tab is your friend• Think about performance