Version 23.0.9145

• Overview
• Key Features
• Getting Started
• Server Configuration
  • Hosting the .NET Edition
  • Hosting the Cross-Platform Edition
  • Hosting Behind a Firewall
• API Design
• Logging and Notifications
• Advanced

Overview

CData API Server enables you to build REST APIs from your existing enterprise data. Through simple point-and-click configuration, you can expose your databases, file stores, and back-end APIs to web, mobile, and custom apps.

Key Features

• APIs from any database: Generate APIs for SQL, NoSQL, and other data sources – SQL Server, MySQL, DB2, Mongo, Cassandra, flat files, and so on.
• Open data access: Expose entry points for popular formats like OData, REST, JSON, SOAP, CSV/TSV, and so on.
• API management: Monitor the APIs, enable logging and rate limiting.
• Publish to any platform: Host API Server on intranets, internet-facing servers, or in the cloud.

Getting Started

See Getting Started for step-by-step setup guides to installing, connecting, building, configuring, and querying with API Server.

Server Configuration

API Server is a lightweight web application available in .NET and Cross-Platform editions.

Hosting the .NET Edition

The .NET edition installs a stand-alone server: see Embedded Server. Or, host API Server in IIS: see Configuration in IIS.

Hosting the Cross-Platform Edition

The Cross-Platform edition is packaged as a WAR file, with a drop-in installation: see Cross-Platform Edition to host API Server on Tomcat and other popular web servers.

Hosting Behind a Firewall

With the .NET edition’s Cloud Gateway feature, you can expose internal resources securely across the firewall by using embedded SSH reverse tunneling. The Cloud Gateway enables you to build an SSH reverse tunnel to an SSH host outside the firewall. The Gateway can also manage the reverse tunnel connection, reconnecting if the connection is lost or interrupted, without any need for a third-party tool.

API Design

See API Design to start working with the standard REST APIs:

• Authenticating and controlling access: See Users to create an API user and authtoken; you can then provide the user’s authtoken in HTTP Authentication. The authtoken defines the user’s permission set, which overrides the server’s Rate Limiting defaults. See Configuring the API to learn how to enable client access to the APIs. For example, to connect from browser-based clients you need to configure CORS.

• Discovering the APIs: The APIs are based on OpenAPI (Swagger), and are fully documented and discoverable. See Discovery to learn how to provide the metadata URLs to apps, client-side libraries, and so on.

• Querying the APIs: You can connect through OData or the CData drivers for API Server. See Querying the API for more on connecting from different standards-based tools.

• Building requests: See these sections to build HTTP requests to the OData and JSON endpoints: Accessing Resources and Invoking Actions show how to execute CRUD operations. Filtering Resources shows how to search data. Additional Formats shows how to request data from the other Web services endpoints available, such as JSONP.

• HTTP responses: Server Responses enumerates the HTTP responses.

Logging and Notifications

Logging details the logging resources available at the server and application levels.

Advanced

API resources are defined by authoring text-based schemas, which have a simple format that makes them easy to edit. Extend the schemas, or write your own, to control the RESTful view of your data. See Typical Customizations to make modifications such as changing column data types.

The Advanced topics also provide a reference to extending schemas to accomplish more advanced integrations, such as using stored procedures to update a database view. Schema Customization introduces you to the parts of a schema.