REST Protocol

From the Rebol Console:

do http://reb4.me/r/rest-curl
read [
    scheme: 'rest
    url: http://rebol.com/
]

The REST Protocol offers an exchange-oriented implementation of HTTP. Unlike Rebol’s built-in HTTP Protocol, REST gives you greater access to both Request and Response headers in order to better access third-party APIs. Additionally, REST has OAuth signing built-in for all those hard-to-reach sites.

Requests

Making requests is easy, just use ‘read.

read [
    scheme: 'rest
    url: http://rebol.info/
]

Using OAuth is as straightforward as adding the various keys and secrets:

read [
    scheme: 'rest
    url: https://api.twitter.com/1.1/account/settings.json
    oauth: [
        Consumer-Key: "...App Key..."
        Consumer-Secret: "...App Secret..."
        OAuth-Token: "...User Token..."
        OAuth-Token-Secret: "...User Secret..."
    ]
]

You can also add some parameters to your request with read/custom:

read/custom [
    scheme: 'rest
    url: https://example.com/upload
    action: 'post
    oauth: :my-oauth-settings
][
    param1: "This"
    param2: "That"
]

And a short-form url is available:

read rest://rebol.com
; short-form does not accommodate HTTPS

Responses

The Response object gives you immediate access to the HTTP status code and headers:

>> page: read rest://rebol.com
>> ? page
PAGE is an object of value: 
   status          integer!  200 
   message         string!   "OK" 
   http-headers    block!    length: 14 
   headers         object!   [Date Server Last-Modified Accept-... 
   content         string!   {<!doctype html> <html><head> <met... 
   binary          binary!   #{ 3C21646F63747970652068746D6C3E0... 
   type            path!     length: 2 
   length          integer!  9379

Notes

  • This version of the REST Protocol does not use Rebol’s built-in TCP Ports, rather uses the cURL shell command. cURL is available by default on most Unix/Linux/Mac OS X installations, and is generally available for most platforms. cURL is used to allow HTTPS support from the Rebol/Core interpreter.
  • This should work within most Shell environments, I have tested on CSH, BASH and SH.
  • A version of this script that uses Rebol’s internal TCP protocol is available at:
    Rebol REST; though has some caveats.
  • Please direct any questions/suggestions for now to my Twitter account: @rgrebol