Content Manager OnDemand REST Services overview

Content Manager OnDemand REST Services are a set of HTTP-based RESTful APIs that provide secure, stateless, and highly efficient access to data stored in Content Manager OnDemand. REST Services provides APIs to access Content Manager OnDemand folder and application group information as well as searching, retrieving, storing, updating, and deleting documents. As a concise set of APIs, REST Services are not a replacement for the Content Manager OnDemand Web Enablement Kit (ODWEK) Java APIs. Likewise, REST Services are not intended to replace the feature-rich client applications such as IBM Content Navigator or the OnDemand Client.

REST Services utilize connection pools as a means to provide stateless access to Content Manager OnDemand servers. Connection pools also improve performance and reduce overhead by performing initialization and logon actions at application startup rather than with each request. Additionally, up to five Content Manager OnDemand folders can be cached by the connection pool, further reducing request overhead. See Connection pools for more details.

Be aware that each connection in a connection pool uses the same Content Manager OnDemand user ID for authentication to the Content Manager OnDemand server. Therefore, information returned from Content Manager OnDemand will honor the permissions for this user ID. It is recommended that individual end-user access to the REST Services be restricted by the client application.

REST Services are secure. During REST Services configuration, an access key and secret key pair are generated. The access key must be passed for all REST Services requests. This key is passed as part of the standard HTTP authorization header. The secret key can optionally be used to sign each request for additional security. The access key and secret key are fully described in Specifying headers and details on how to generate them are found in Creating keys.

The following is an example of an access key/secret key pair:

Access key: pool1-wRTaeIIG3HzTyrbI5t/b

Secret key: KW1MdeHknWeuRcqBVbYOpgl24Fh8af69hr/PYm6i