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This page is intended for developers who want to start using Magnolia REST features.

In this page, we:

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This beginner's tutorial is intended for developers who want to start using Magnolia REST features

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Key points

This section is a very brief summary of the most important things from the sections below.

To use Magnolia REST features:

• Set up Magnolia with version 5.6 or higher; you may want to use a preconfigured Magnolia bundle.
• Make sure your bundle contains at least the Magnolia REST modules magnolia-rest-integration, magnolia-rest-services, magnolia-rest-content-delivery (version 2.0 or higher). See REST module - Installing if needed.
• Design a security strategy with custom users to access the REST endpoint. To start immediately or for testing purposes, you can use superuser on the author instance and anonymous user on the public instance at your own risk.

• Provide YAML configuration to enable the usage of the delivery endpoint in a light module.

  Expand
  title Click here to get a starting point for configuration
  Code Pro language yaml title delivery-base-definition.yaml linenumbers true class: info.magnolia.rest.delivery.jcr.v1.JcrDeliveryEndpointDefinition params: website: depth: 2 nodeTypes: - mgnl:page - mgnl:area - mgnl:component childNodeTypes: - mgnl:area - mgnl:component rootPath: / includeSystemProperties: false Read Delivery endpoint API - YAML configuration for further details.

• cURL:

  Code Pro
  curl -X GET 'http://localhost:8080/magnoliaPublic/.rest/delivery/website/v1/travel/about'

  and GET a REST.

Setup

In this section, we assume you are using a Magnolia bundle version 5.6 or higher and you know how to:

• Install Magnolia.
• Set the magnolia.resources.dir property in the magnolia.properties file.
• Start and stop Magnolia.

Required modules

The modules listed below are required to use all Magnolia REST features in a productive context:

• magnolia-rest-integration
• magnolia-rest-services
• magnolia-rest-content-delivery

When using a preconfigured Magnolia bundle, your webapps already contain these three modules. If you are using a custom webapp or bundle, make sure your custom setup contains the modules listed above. See REST module - Installing if needed.

When developing new features, it can be helpful to use the magnolia-rest-tools module which enables Swagger UI tools. 

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If you do not want to use the Swagger UI tools, skip ahead to security settings.

Installing the magnolia-rest-tools module

To enable Swagger you must add magnolia-rest-tools to your webapp(s). 

With Maven

Add the following snippet to the pom file of your webapp:

With a downloaded bundle

If you are running a preconfigured Magnolia Tomcat bundle:

• Stop the Tomcat server.
• Download the REST tools bundle 

  Artifact resource link
  groupId info.magnolia.rest artifactId magnolia-rest-tools label $artifactId.zip renderType download_link resourceType ZIP

  .
• Unzip the download and copy* all the files to: 
  • $tomcat/webapps/magnoliaAuthor/WEB-INF/lib
  • $tomcat/webapps/magnoliaPublic/WEB-INF/lib (if the directory already exists)

* The zip file may contain .jar files which are already present in the WEB-INF/lib folder of your webapps.

Set the Swagger API base path

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The Swagger API explorer tool searches for the API at a path set in /modules/rest-tools/config/apiBasepath. The default value is  http://localhost:8080/.rest . The value for this property must match the following pattern:

<protocol>://<hostname>:<port>/<context>/.rest

When using one of Magnolia's preconfigured bundles running on localhost, set the property to http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/.rest .

Set the path to where REST services reside on your system. If you run the standard Magnolia bundle and work on the author instance, set the path to  http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/.rest .

Getting content with REST - examples

Look at the following examples of how to get content from our public demo using our out-of-the-box REST API.

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setup setup

Setting up Magnolia for REST

In this section you use Magnolia CLI to install and start a preconfigured Magnolia 5.6.0 bundle with the required modules for Magnolia REST features.

If you do not have Magnolia CLI, install it as described here.

Then install Magnolia as follows:

1. Change to the directory to where you want to install the Magnolia bundle

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http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/.rest

After setting the base path, restart Magnolia.

Swagger UI tools is in Dev > REST Tools.

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This section provides step by step instructions to set up a Magnolia bundle that contains all REST modules including the magnolia-rest-tools module to use Swagger UI tools. The procedure uses Magnolia CLI. If you are an experienced Magnolia user, you can skip this and set up Magnolia in your preferred style.

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Choose a directory to work in.

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1. . In our example, we use the directory ~/dev/mgnl-rest-test-base

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1. :

   Code Block

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1. cd ~/dev/mgnl-rest-test-base

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Download a bundle with Magnolia CLI.

1. Execute the Magnolia CLI  jumpstart  command to get Magnolia 5.6.0:

   Code Block

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1. mgnl jumpstart -m 5.6

   Jumpstart downloads and extracts

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1. the magnolia-community-demo-bundle

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1.  5.6.0 that comes with Tomcat server.

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   The following files and folders are created

Jumpstart also sets the property magnolia.resources.dir in the file magnolia.properties.

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1. :

   Code Block
   language text
   mgnl-rest-test-base/ ├── apache-tomcat ├── light-modules └── magnolia.zip

We will need the light-modules folder later on. Do not start the Tomcat server yet.

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Add magnolia-rest tools to your bundle.

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1. Go to the ~dev/mgnl-rest-test-base

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Start Magnolia.

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1. directory

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1. and execute the

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1. Magnolia CLI  start  command:

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1. mgnl start

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1. When starting for the first time, Magnolia

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Log in to the author instance.

1. runs a web update and automatically installs all its modules.

2. In your preferred browser, open the URL http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/ and log in as user superuser with the password superuser.

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1. Have a look around Magnolia. Access the public instance with the URL http://localhost:8080/magnoliaPublic

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Set the Swagger base API path.

In order to properly use the Swagger UI tools - which are used for development only - you must change one property in the configuration.

On the Admin UI, open the Configuration app and find the node /modules/rest-tools/config. (You can use the URL http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/.magnolia/admincentral#app:configuration:browser;/modules/rest-tools/config:treeview: to go there directly.)

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1. /.

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cd ~dev/mgnl-rest-test-base
mgnl start

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security security

Security settings

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Multiexcerpt include
MultiExcerptName general-security-advice PageWithExcerpt REST security

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You must read and understand REST security before enabling and using the REST endpoints in a productive environment.

In the context of this tutorial and to get started quickly, we use users with roles provided by the default setup of the Magnolia bundle

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:

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• superuser in the author

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• instance has:

• • Read/Write access for the path / on every JCR workspace, granted by the  superuser
 
• • role.

  • Web access for the HTTP methods 

    Mgnl get

    , 

    Mgnl put

    , 

    Mgnl post

     and 

    Mgnl delete

     for the path /magnoliaAuthor/.rest* 

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• • granted by the role rest-admin.

Note that superuser is given a lot of power. Use it carefully in the context of this tutorial.  But never use superuser on a productive environment.

Using anonymous in the public instance

The public instance is typically visited by users who do not authenticate. These visits are done as the anonymous user, who also has some permissions.

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• anonymous (unauthenticated user) in the public instance has:

  • Read access on the path /

  for

  •  for the JCR workspaces website, dam, googleSitemaps, category, and tours.

  • Web access for the HTTP

  method

  • method GET  for the path /magnoliaAuthor/.rest/delivery/*

As you can see, anonymous user only has read access and can only access the Delivery endpoint. That is sufficient for the moment.

In a productive environment we highly recommend you create custom REST roles granting specific access for specific use cases.

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Magnolia provides the following REST endpoints out-of-the-box:

If you want to use REST to create, update and delete content, we recommend you use the Nodes endpoint which supports all required operations. If you mainly want to read data, consider using the Delivery endpoint. It provides convenient, formatted JSON and can be customized and configured with YAML via light module. With the Commands endpoint you can trigger commands and Cache endpoint deals with cache.

You can also create your own custom endpoints. 

Tools to test REST requests

In this section, we suggest some tools you can use to test the REST API without needing to develop a REST consuming client application. Testing your REST requests is useful when you are developing client apps and similar things that interact with the REST endpoints.

Browsers

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Before  enabling and using the REST endpoints in a  production  environment, y ou must read and understand  REST security .

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cURL

cURL is a command line tool. It can be used on most well-known operating systems.

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On the first attempt of a request, use the -i option to display all response headers.

If the response body is fine and delivers JSON, pretty-print and colorize the response body with tools such as jq.

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Swagger UI tools

If you have not installed magnolia-rest-tools, which provides the Swagger UI tools, skip this section or see how to enable the swagger tools above.

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Seamlessly integrated into the Magnolia Admin UI. Comfortable to use form-based interface.

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The endpoints require specific annotations to make them appear on the Swagger UI tools. Delivery endpoint is not annotated and does not appear on the Swagger tools. REST request is sent by the user who logged into Magnolia; it is difficult to test with different users.

Starting the Swagger UI tools

Go to Dev > REST Tools.

Click on one of the links to open a submenu that shows all supported operations provided by the endpoint.

Click List operations or Expand operations to get the details for the operations.

Here is an example for the nodes endpoint 

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Enter values at least for the mandatory parameters and click Try it out!.

Swagger shows the response code, the response headers and the response body:

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Using the delivery endpoint

The delivery endpoint is a REST API provided by Magnolia out-of-the-box. Use it for obtaining JCR data as JSON. 

In addition to defining security settings, you You must provide YAML-based configuration for the delivery endpoint so that it can serve JSON.

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curl -X GET 'http://localhost:8080/magnoliaAuthor/.rest/delivery/website/v1/travel/about' \
-u superuser:superuser

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anc-restendpointsoverview anc-restendpointsoverview

REST endpoints overview

Magnolia provides the following REST endpoints out-of-the-box:

If you want to use REST to create, update and delete content, we recommend you use the Nodes endpoint which supports all required operations. If you mainly want to read data, consider using the Delivery endpoint. It provides convenient, formatted JSON and can be customized and configured with YAML via light module. With the Commands endpoint you can trigger commands and Cache endpoint deals with cache. 

Further reading

• Tools to test REST requests

• REST API

• How to create a custom Java-based REST endpoint.