Using Apache Abdera for working with Lotus Connections API

In the Connections API entry i blogged about how to make a REST call to the Connection server using simple Java based API, But in order to work with Connections we need two parts first is ability to make HTTP call and other is ability to parse the feed and get information from it.

The Apache Abdera project library provides infrastructure to help in both these infrastructure pieces. Both the part to make HTTP call and the part required for parsing and working with feed. I wanted to try this so i did create this HelloProfileAPI.java which is standalone Java application which makes a call to profile service and returns the result in ATOM format, once the results are returned it prints the content of feed entries on System.Out

package com.webspherenotes.connections;

import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;
import java.util.List;

import org.apache.abdera.Abdera;
import org.apache.abdera.model.Document;
import org.apache.abdera.model.Entry;
import org.apache.abdera.model.Feed;
import org.apache.abdera.parser.Parser;

public class HelloProfileAPI {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    try {
      URL url = new URL(
          "http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/atom/search.do?name=was");

      // Open the URL: throws exception if not found
      HttpURLConnection conn = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
      conn.connect();
      InputStream inputStream = conn.getInputStream();
      Abdera abdera = new Abdera();
      Parser parser = abdera.getParser();
      Document feed_doc = parser.parse(inputStream);
      Feed feed = feed_doc.getRoot();
      List entryList = feed.getEntries();
      for (Entry e : entryList) {
        System.out.println(e.getContent());
      }
    } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
      e.printStackTrace(System.out);
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace(System.out);
    }
  }
}

In this case i am making call to "http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/atom/search.do?name=was" and then parsing the feed and then i am printing content of feed entry to System.out. In my case there is only one user with name equal to was so it returns big chunk of HTML for that user like this


<span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="vcard"><div><img src="http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/photo.do?key=c3219b57-5e65-4c50-b00a-3e722315d035&lastMod=1302886728960" class="photo"></img></div><div><a class="fn url" href="http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/atom/profile.do?key=c3219b57-5e65-4c50-b00a-3e722315d035">was bind</a></div><div><a class="sound url" href="http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/audio.do?key=c3219b57-5e65-4c50-b00a-3e722315d035&lastMod=1302886728960">Pronunciation</a></div><div class="x-groupwareMail" style="display:none"></div><div class="org"><span class="organization-unit"></span></div><div class="role"></div><div class="title"></div><div class="x-office"><span class="x-building"></span><span class="x-floor"></span><span class="x-office-number"></span></div><div class="tel"><abbr class="type" title="work">Work:</abbr><span class="value"></span></div><div class="x-manager-uid" style="display:none"></div><div class="x-is-manager" style="display:none">N</div><div class="x-profile-key">c3219b57-5e65-4c50-b00a-3e722315d035</div><div class="uid">546b0260-6273-497e-acfa-1e898f3037d4</div><div class="x-profile-uid">wasbind</div><div class="x-lconn-userid">546b0260-6273-497e-acfa-1e898f3037d4</div><div class="rev" style="display:none">2011-04-15T16:58:48.960Z</div><div class="x-profile-type" style="display:none">default</div></span></>




I tried pasting the HTML in a simple test.html to see what is getting returned and i can see the markup for person card like this

Using Connection API

There could be situations when you would want to use the Connections API for interacting with Connections from outside the Web interface provided by Connection. Ex, you want to create a custom web application or portlet that will let you search for user in the Connection profile repository or want to pull users blog entries and display them outside, if thats the case you should use the REST API provided by Connections, basic idea is you make a HTTP call from your application to Connection, and it will return ATOM based response, you can then parse the feed,.. If you want to post data to connections you will have to create ATOM feed and send it to Connection using HTTP using either HTTP POST or PUT methods or you can delete a record by calling HTTP DELETE method.

I wanted to try this feature so i did create a simple standalone Java application which makes use of plain java to make a HTTP call with name of the user as argument to profiles feature in Connections and the Connections server will return list of all the users with matching name and i will print the output to Standard output

package com.webspherenotes.ssl;

import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.net.HttpURLConnection;
import java.net.MalformedURLException;
import java.net.URL;

public class HelloSSL {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
        try {
      URL url = 
      new URL("http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles/atom/search.do?name=was");
      
      // Open the URL: throws exception if not found
      HttpURLConnection conn = 
       (HttpURLConnection)url.openConnection();
      conn.connect();
      InputStream inputStream = conn.getInputStream();
      BufferedReader reader = 
      new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(inputStream));
      String line = null;
      while((line = reader.readLine()) != null){
        System.out.println(line);
      }
    } catch (MalformedURLException e) {
      e.printStackTrace(System.out);
    } catch (IOException e) {
      e.printStackTrace(System.out);
    }
  }
}

In my case the profiles application is available at http://wpconnections.atech.com/profiles and i am calling the Search API with one parameter name=was, which is my search criteria. Similarly you can search for all the users from say Fremont city by passing city=fremont as argument.

Connection will return a search result in ATOM feed format, i am reading that response and printing it to System.out.Take a look at Lotus Connections API document for more information what API meets your requirement and what are the inputs and outputs of the API call.