Passing file types

Invoking a REST service with an input parameter of type file

In IBM® BPM, if the OpenAPI specification (formerly known as Swagger) for a REST service specifies an input parameter of type file, it is mapped to the IBM BPM document type IBM_BPM_Document. This means that your process or service flow uses a reference to a document in the in the IBM BPM document store and the ECMDocumentInfo input object refers to that file. For more information about using the embedded IBM BPM document store, see Working with IBM BPM documents.

For input parameters of type file, the content type multipart/form-data is supported.

The following example illustrates how to provide a reference to a document in the IBM BPM document store.

// Prepare REST request
var request = new BPMRESTRequest();

// Specify the external service and its operation to be invoked
request.externalServiceName = "MyExternalService";
request.operationName = "addContract";

// 
// Set the http headers
var headers = {"Content-Type": "multipart/form-data"};
request.httpHeaders = headers;

// Provide a reference to the document that is to be used as input parameter of the REST service
var contractFile = new tw.object.ECMDocumentInfo();
contractFile.objectId = "idd_808F0A58-0000-C214-BE0C-E24DEF2EA51E"; 

// Prepare all parameters that are needed for the REST request
request.parameters = {"file": contractFile};

// Execute the REST request, which returns a BPMRESTResponse instance.
var response = tw.system.invokeREST(request);

// have a look at the response

For more information about the ECMDocumentInfo, BPMRESTRequest and BPMRESTResponse objects, see the reference topic in JavaScript API.

Invoking a REST service that returns a file as response

In IBM BPM, if the OpenAPI specification for a REST service specifies a response of type file, the file is stored as a document of type IBM_BPM_Document in the IBM BPM document store. A reference to the document is returned to your service flow in an object of business object type ECMDocumentInfo.

The following example illustrates how to receive a file as response from a REST service invocation.

// Prepare REST request
var request = new BPMRESTRequest();

// Specify the external service and its operation to be invoked
request.externalServiceName = "MyExternalService";
request.operationName = "getContract";

// Set the accept header
var headers = {"Accept": "application/pdf"};
request.httpHeaders = headers;

// Prepare the parameters that are needed for the REST request
request.parameters = {"contractId": "1234567890"};

// Execute REST request which returns a BPMRESTResponse instance.
var response = tw.system.invokeREST(request);

// Have a look at the response
log.info("Response - httpStatusCode: " + response.httpStatusCode);
log.info("Response - httpStatusMessage: " + response.httpStatusMessage);
log.info("Response - httpHeaders: " + response.httpHeaders);
log.info("Response - content: " + response.content);

// The response file is stored as a document in the IBM BPM document store. 
// An instance of ECMDocumentInfo is returned that contains the details.
var documentInfo = JSON.parse(response.content);
log.info("Response - documentInfo.objectId: " + documentInfo.objectId);

For more information about the ECMDocumentInfo, BPMRESTRequest and BPMRESTResponse objects, see the reference topic in JavaScript API.

For more information about using the IBM BPM document store, see Working with IBM BPM documents.