Should my database be exposed by REST API - asp.net

Considering I have just one table named entity, it's a REST heresy to have an /entity URI to serve some fields of this table and another /entity/id/details path to share a complete, or more large, representation of them?

It depends on your requirement.
A good start could be exposing standard methods to the /entities resource,
and implementing the Partial Response pattern via ?fields property.
Example:
In the case of Entity fields being: id, name, description
/entities/{id}?fields=id,name
would return a resource containing id and name only

Related

Use a repository with JMS serializer

I have a Symfony 3.4 projet with a REST api. I use JMS serializer.
I have a entity User and I have a route /api/user which return the user id, name , ...
I also have a entity badges which has a relation many to many with user (so a user_badge table). Like I read, when the pivot table have extra column (like in my case on user_badge), I need to create two relation many to one to link my user to badges.
In my route /api/user I add the return on my badges with JMS, I return my badge id and the achievement date (the extra column) from user_badge with the method getUserBadges from my entity User.
But now I want to order by the badges using a column from the badge entity.
How can I achieve this ? The fact than my model user can't access the badges without a heavy foreach. I need to make a request to getting all the badges in the correct order and passing this to JMS.
(I don't know which source file I should provide, cause I don't really know how to achieve it)

Marketo REST API - what is "dedupeFields" for custom objects?

When it comes to creating/updating custom objects, can I use both dedupeFields or lookupField when pushing the data to Marketo?
What is the difference between the two?
I'm not sure what do you mean under lookupField, as there is no such input field described in the API documentation of the Sync Custom Objects endpoint. (That is the endpoint to create or update custom objects.)
In the other hand, you do not need such a standalone lookup field, as with the input array you provide the objects you want to create or update, with all their important values. Have a look at the sample payload in the docs.
When input is used together with the optional dedupeBy and action fields, you have full control over which object you want to create or update.
Also, the endpoint expects the name of the dedupe field under dedupeBy key, as opposed to dedupeFields. So the name is singular; you can provide a single field name use, and it does what you can expect: if the value in the field for a given record is not unique, an error will be returned for the individual record.

Marketo REST API - is there a way to get all records of a custom object?

I created a custom object and i want to get all its existing records. Is there a way of doing that via the REST API? Seems like a very basic and simple operation but i couldn't find information about it anywhere.
As you say, it seems like a basic task, but in the reality, it is more complex indeed.
Unfortunately, the Get Custom Object endpoint (which is the only endpoint to fetch Custom Objects) requires the filterType and filterValues parameters to be present as well. Basically this means that you have to have some information about the queried objects beforehand.
Also, a further restriction is that the value of filterType can only be one of the “searchable” fields of the Custom Object, meaning that it has to be either a Link field or a Dedupe field. (These fields are listed under the searchableFields property in the response from the Describe Custom Objects endpoint.)
So as mentioned above, you have to know the values for at least one of the properties of your Custom Objects before you make the query.
With additional queries though, you can grab these required values.
Let's say, you have your Custom Object linked to the Lead Object, and the Link field is called Owner Email (with the REST API name being ownerEmail) which links to the Email Address field of the Lead Object. In this case you could set the filterType to ownerEmail and set the emails of the leads as filterValues.
Then it is up to you how you gather the emails of those Leads who has a Custom Object attached. Luckily the REST API won’t throw an error if you provide a value that has no corresponding Custom Objects.
If your Custom Object is linked to a Lead, it's a bit complex but you can do like this:
Create a smart list and filter with "Has You Custom Object"
Get the smart list with API (GET /rest/asset/v1/smartLists.json)
Based on this list of Leads, get all Custom Objects (see the other answer).

Get the entity context in a Data Transformer

I have a problem concerning the usage of a DataTransformer.
Basically, I am developing a translation tool for my application whose goal is to be as generic as possible.
For that, I chose to follow that model : Database modeling for international and multilingual purposes
So, in different entities in my application, I have translatable attributes that simply are references to i18n elements. Then, this i18n ID is referenced in Translation table entries, that handle translation strings.
I succeed handling my translation interface, but I now have a problem with my forms : Indeed, I want some of my entities to be created/updated via forms. The problem is that I don't want the user to set a i18n ID for the translatable fields, of course, but a text, so that it can be handled by my application to either update or create the related translation in database.
I thought then that creating a DataTransformer could be a good idea, so that I can get the related translation string from the i18nID that is in my Entity entry (for that way, no problem). But my problem here is for the opposite way :
How can I deal with creating/updating i18n entries in my reverseTransform() method without knowing the entity values context?
Is there any way to get the previous entity values so that I could get the i18 ID that is stored originally in my entity? I understand that a Data Transformer is theorically totally independent from my forms and my entities, but I'm totally blocked about how to handle this case.
Indeed, when I save my entity with my translated string, I have no way to know the entity context in my reverseTransform() method, that would have permitted me to get the i18nID of the entity and to update it.
I just have the string that typed the user, but I can't do anything with that, because I can't know if it is an update or not since I don't have access to my entities.
Do you have any clue to do that? Is trying to use a DataTransformer to perform this a bad idea?
Thank you !

MVC3 routes - replace id with object name

I'm looking for a fast & elegant way of converting my object IDs with descriptive names, so that my autogenerated routes look like:
/products/oak-table-25x25-3-1
instead of
/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5
In this sample:
uid = "5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5"
name = "Oak table (25x25) 3/1"
I don't even know how that feature could be named, so that I might google for it.
The problem that I see so far is the uniqueness of that "url-object-name", for example if I have two oak tables 25x35 in the db, and their names differ too little to be uniquely url-named but enough to fool the unique constraint in the db.
I'm thinking of writing that function for name-transform in SQL as an UDF, then adding a calculated field that returns it, then unique-constraining that field.
Is there some more mainstream way of achieving that?
One method is that employed by stackoverflow.com which in your case would be:
/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5/oak-table-25x25-3-1
This ensures uniqueness, however the length of the UUID may be a deterrent. You may consider adding a sequential int or bigint identity value to the products table in addition to the uniqueidentifier field. This however would require an additional index on that column for lookup, though a similar index would be required for a Url having only a descritive string. Yet another method would be to use a hash value, seeded by date for instance, which you can compose with the descriptive name. It is simpler to rely on a sequential ID value generated by a database, but if you envision use NoSQL storage mechanisms in the future you may consider using an externally generated hash value to append.
Identity should have 2 properties: it should be unique and unchangable. If you can guarantee, that /products/oak-table-25x25-3-1 will never change to /products/oak-table-25x25-3-1-1 (remember, user can have bookmarks, that shouldn't return 404 statuscode)- you can use name as url parameter and get record by this parameter.
If you can't guarantee uniqueness or want to select record more faster - use next:
/products/123/oak-table-25x25-3-1 - get record by id (123)
/products/123/blablabla - should redirect to first, because blabla no exists or have anoher id
/products/123 - should redirect to first
And try to use more short identities - remember, that at web 2.0 url is a part of UI, and UI should be friendly.
MVC routing (actions) will handle spaces and slashes in a name. It will encode them as %20, and then decode them correctly.
Thus your URL would be /products/oak%20table%2025x25-3%2F1
I have done something very similar in an eCommerce platform I am working on.
The idea is that the URL without the unique ID is better for SEO but we didn't want the unique ID to be the product name that can change often.
The solution was to implement .NET MVC "URL slug only" functionality. The product manager creates "slugs" for every product that are unique and are assigned to products. These link to the product but the product ID and name can be changed whenever.
This allows:
domain.com/oak-table-25x25-3-1
to point to:
/products/5bd8c59c-fc37-40c3-bf79-dd30e79b55a5
(The same functionality can be used on categories too so domain.com/tables can point to domain.com/category/5b38c79c-f837-42c3-bh79-dd405479b15b5)
I have documented how I did this at:
http://makit.net/post/3380143142/dotnet-slug-only-urls

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