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To deploy the services, download the warfile and configure the property files (e.g. subject sources, databases, logging, etc).  Configure authentication.

Note: there is a command line and java API web service client called Grouper Client

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1. Understand the object model.  All grouper-ws services are operations based on simple data structures.  The structures support Strings, ints, arrays, and structure references.
   1. Core web service API
   2. Example structure (only "getters" and "setters" are applicable properties)
   3. Each operation has many samples (authmated captures, versioned, and up to date).  Here is an example
   4. Most options has a sensible default (e.g. MemberFilter defaults to All members)
   5. Lookup objects in various (consistent) ways.  e.g. to delete a group, you can pass the name or uuid of the group.
2. Decide if you are using SOAP or REST (this is real REST, not Axis HTTP/XML)
   1. Both SOAP and REST support the same API
3. Inside SOAP and REST, each operation has two levels of complexity, the normal one, and the Lite one.
   1. Normal operation: can usually be batched (support a list of inputs, e.g. add multiple groups at once), supports complex inputs (arrays or structures)
   2. Lite operation: supports only inputs of scalars (no structures, no arrays... only Strings, ints, etc).  In REST this also means that the request can be sent via query string only
4. If SOAP:
   1. Implement based on the WSDL.  To get the WSDL of your running grouper web service deployment, use this URL: https://server.address/grouperWs/services/GrouperService?wsdl.  Note, if your servlet is not grouperWs then adjust accordingly.
   2. There is a sample Java client with sample calls
5. If REST:
   1. Decide what format you want to send and receive data.  grouper-ws supports XHTML, XML, and JSON, as well as query strings for input (in URL or message body)
   2. There are many samples

.NET client development guide

PHP client development guide

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• API
  • Batched operations (e.g. add 100 subjects to a group at once).  There is a separate server-side max-in-batch param in the grouper-ws.properties.
  • Transaction support (if any fails in one batch request, rollback all in that single batch request)
• Grouper WS Web Services Authentication
  • Let container or web server handle
    o   PKI
    o   http-simple-auth
    o   Source IP address filtering (TODO)
  • Custom authenticator
  • WS-Security
    o   PKI
    o   Kerberos
  • Proxying. The web service can execute operations based on an underlying user, not the authenticating user.  Note the authenticating user must have appropriate permissions
• Error Handling
  • Error codes and error messages are sent in responses, as well as warnings.  In batched mode, batches of response codes are returned.  In REST, the http status code is used as well.
• Clients
  • Grouper will provide a quick start with Java, and it is up to users to create their own clients.  The SOAP and REST are based on the HTTP documents, so any programming language will work
• Web Service Implementation
  • Apache Axis for SOAP, and home-grown for REST

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