Introduction

This manual describes the Escenic Content Engine's open web service, and provides basic advice on how you can use it to integrate the Content Engine with other applications and web services. Client applications can communicate with the web service by means of a REST API. This manual assumes that you are already familiar with the characteristics of REST (Representational State Transfer) APIs, and the principles on which they are based. If you are not, you can find out more about REST here:

The Content Engine's web service uses the ATOM publishing protocol, and has the following characteristics:

  • All operations are performed using HTTP GET, PUT, POST and DELETE commands

  • All resources provided by the web service are identified by URIs.

  • Given the initial URI of the web service, all the resources it can provide are then discoverable via hypertext links.

  • Resources returned by the web service fall into three categories (as defined by the ATOM publishing protocol):

    • Feed resources (that is, ATOM feeds containing a list of resource links)

    • Entry resources (single ATOM entry elements containing, for example, content items)

    • Media resources (binary resources such as images or video clips)

  • Wherever possible, Standard ATOM constructs are used in the entry resources returned by the web service. However, some extensions are used. These fall into two categories:

    • Some RDF (Dublin Core) constructs are used where suitable standard ATOM constructs are not available. See Standard Element Usage for details.

    • A small number of proprietary extensions are used where necessary.

Here is a complete list of the ATOM standards on which the web service is based:

  • RFC 4287 — Atom Syndication Format

  • RFC 5023 — Atom Publishing Protocol

  • RFC 4685 — Atom Threading Extensions

  • RFC 5005 — Feed Paging and Archiving

  • RFC 5829 — Version Navigation Link Relations

  • OpenSearch — OpenSearch search descriptions are used to describe how to search in an Atom collection.

  • draft-snell-atompub-tombstones-06 (moving forward to RFC soon) — Atom Tombstones

  • draft-divilly-atom-hierarchy-03 — Atom Hierarchy Relations

Since the web service API is largely based on these open, documented standards, the reference information in this guide is limited to the proprietary extensions needed to provide a comprehensive service.