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Sakai Integrations (SOAP, RESTful web services and LTI in Sakai)

Matthew Jones - Longsight - June 2013

Aaron Zeckoski - Unicon - June 2013

Bob Long - Unicon - June 2013

Steve Swinsburg - The Australian National University - September 2010

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Overview

SOAP services

Enabling and securing them

How to use them

REST services

How to use them

Entity Broker

LTI

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SOAP services

Provided via Apache Axis
Can expose any API method, just inject the service bean and use it
Runtime compilation, can modify ‘live’
Require a valid session, generally admin.

There’s a webservice to do that!

http://your.sakai.server/sakai-axis/*.jws

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Enabling the SOAP services

Disabled by default
In sakai.properties:

This is insecure though. Setup properly.

webservices.allowlogin=true

webservices.allow=.+

webservices.log-allowed=true

webservices.log-denied=true

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Using the SOAP services

Script them via Perl / PHP / Java ...

If Perl, the SOAP::Lite module is excellent!

Or use a client:

Mac: http://ditchnet.org/soapclient/
PC/Mac/Linux: http://www.soapui.org/

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REST services

Provided via EntityBroker
RESTful URLs and adheres to HTTP standard for actions and responses
Return XML/JSON/HTML view of an entity or list of entities
Default actions (GET, PUT, DELETE etc)
Can also define custom actions

http://your.sakai.server/direct

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Using the REST services

Simply make a request!

/direct/profile/steve.json
/direct/user/current.xml
/direct/announcement/user.json?n=10&d=30

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Entity Broker

Fast becoming the defacto standard for exposing your data.

More consumers than just Java (PHP/JS/even just HTML)

e.g. profile images exposed as direct link

/direct/profile/steve/image

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Entity Broker

If you have a service layer, include EB

Can have your providers in your webapp
Special Spring setup to allow them to register

Can also register events with SiteStats via EntityBroker.

Easy config, all done within the tool rather than within SiteStats.

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Project Keitai

A new project for 2012/2013 involves adding EntityBroker Interfaces for all tools.
Phase 1 is over half completed. When this is done is should allow for new integrations, including mobile and new web UI
https://confluence.sakaiproject.org/display/MOBILE/Home