Posting to a REST API on form submit with Orbeon - orbeon

Question

I am looking through the documentation for a sample of how to handle a submit from an Orbeon form that I gather some data in and then submitting to another application via REST. I am not seeing anything that shows how to do that. Does Orbeon provide functionality to do that or do I need to code some JSP or something else on the backside to handle that?

Answer 1

My understanding is, that you have to provide/implement the REST service yourself. You aren't restricted to do it in Java, but if this is your preferred language, here's how a very simple servlet would look like. In this case the REST service saves the form in a file in the temp directory.
import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileWriter;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.PrintWriter;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Enumeration;
import java.util.Optional;
import java.util.logging.Logger;
import javax.servlet.ServletException;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletRequest;
import javax.servlet.http.HttpServletResponse;
public class FormDumpServlet extends HttpServlet {
private static final Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(FormDumpServlet.class.getName());
private static final SimpleDateFormat FORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm-ss-SSS");
protected Optional<String> makeTempDir() {
final String dir = System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir");
logger.info(String.format("java.io.tmpdir=%s", dir));
if (dir == null) {
logger.severe("java.io.tmpdir is null, can't create temp directory");
return Optional.empty();
}
final File f = new File(dir,"form-dumps");
if (f.exists() && f.isDirectory() && f.canWrite()) {
return Optional.of(f.getAbsolutePath());
}
if (f.mkdir()) {
return Optional.of(f.getAbsolutePath());
}
logger.severe(String.format("failed to create temp dir <%s>", f.getAbsolutePath()));
return Optional.empty();
}
#Override
protected void doPost(HttpServletRequest req, HttpServletResponse resp) throws ServletException, IOException {
String path = req.getPathInfo();
if (!path.equalsIgnoreCase("/accept-form")) {
resp.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_NOT_FOUND);
return;
}
Enumeration<String> parameterNames = req.getParameterNames();
while(parameterNames.hasMoreElements()) {
final String name = parameterNames.nextElement();
final String value = req.getParameter(name);
logger.info(String.format("parameter: name=<%s>, value=<%s>", name, value));
}
Optional<String> tempPath = makeTempDir();
if (tempPath.isPresent()) {
String fn = String.format("%s.xml", FORMAT.format(new Date()));
File f = new File(new File(tempPath.get()), fn);
logger.info(String.format("saving form to file <%s>", f.getAbsolutePath()));
try(PrintWriter pw = new PrintWriter(new FileWriter(f))) {
req.getReader().lines().forEach((l) -> pw.println(l));
}
}
resp.setStatus(HttpServletResponse.SC_OK);
}
}
You also have to configure a property in properties-local.xml which connects the send action for your form (the form with the name my_form in your application my_application) to the REST endpoint. This property could look as follows:
<property
as="xs:string"
name="oxf.fr.detail.process.send.my_application.my_form"
>
require-valid
then save-final
then send(uri = "http://localhost:8080/my-form-dump-servlet/accept-form")
then success-message(message = "Success: the form was transferred to the REST service")
</property>