Web Service-Based Automation

The recommended way to implement an automated media publishing process is to use the Content Engine's web service. This web service allows you to interact with the Content Engine by sending HTTP requests to the web service. For a description of the web service and how to use it in general, see the Escenic Content Engine Integration Guide. The web service allows an external process to perform most of the operations that end users can perform from Content Studio. In this case the objective is to create a video/audio content item, which involves the following steps:

1. POST the media file you want to publish to the Content Engine web service. The web service has a special fixed URI to which media files and other binary files can be POSTed

2. GET the web service URI for the publication/section to which the content item is to be added.

3. Make an XML document (specifically, an Atom entry) containing all the information required to create the required content item and POST it to the correct URI.

The process of creating a media content item is in fact no different from the process of creating other kinds of binary content items (images, PDFs, office documents and so on). It is described in detail in the following sections of the Escenic Content Engine Integration Guide:

• Navigate The Section Hierarchy tells you how to get the upload URL of the section you want to add the content item to.

• Create a Content Item tells you how to create and upload a content item in general.

• Creating Binary Content items provides the additional information you need about uploading binary files to the Content Engine web service.

• Creating Content Items in Different States tells you how to set the state of the content item you create. In order to trigger transcoding and publishing, you need to set the state of the content item to published.