auto-api 2.0.1

Automatic Web API REST

AutoApi

The goal of AutoApi is avoid developing an API REST at the start of a project, making a prototype easier than usual. AutoApi also has an authentication system and multiple APIs are supported.

Quickstart

Assuming you have MongoDB server running in localhost on the default port without authentication, AutoApi starts as:

$ workon api
(api) $ pip install auto_api
(api) $ autoapi
  * Running on http://localhost:8686/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
  ...

A personal agenda is a good example to show how AutoApi works. We will use the example API to insert and retrieve items from agenda collection.

Insert

To add an item in the agenda, the following HTTP request shows how to do it:

POST http://localhost:8686/example/agenda
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "name": "user",
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "phone": "[phone]",
  "address": "123 Street"
}

It's important to add /example (API name) before the REST path /agenda, because that is the way AutoApi identifies them. The response will contain the id of the created item as:

{"id": "591a79400000000000000000"}

Where the value of id will always be a MongoDB ObjectId.

Retrieve

To get the previous inserted item in the agenda, is required to know the id of the item. The previous response shows the id is 591a79400000000000000000, so the item can be retrieve making the following HTTP request:

GET http://localhost:8686/example/agenda/591a79400000000000000000

In the same way as the insert operation, the API name and the REST path are required, in this case the path is /agenda/591a79400000000000000000. The response will contain the initial inserted data and the AutoApi assigned id:

{
  "id": "591a79400000000000000000",
  "name": "user",
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "phone": "[phone]",
  "address": "123 Street"
}

But, if you want to retrieve all the items of the agenda, the following HTTP request shows how:

GET http://localhost:8686/example/agenda

And the response will be:

[
  {
    "id": "591a79400000000000000000",
    "name": "user",
    "email": "[e-mail]",
    "phone": "[phone]",
    "address": "123 Street"
  },
  ...
]

How does AutoApi work?

AutoApi was develop on Python using Flask and MongoDB, it was thought to support multiples API because AutoApi uses a database to represent an API, thus to differentiate between two APIs it is necessary to add the api name as a prefix in the URL. For instance, to retrieve all the movies from imdb-copy API it is necessary to do a GET to /imdb-copy/movies, but to retrieve the movies from rottentomatoes-copy API the URL is /rottentomatoes-copy/movies.

Another important feature of AutoApi is the authentication, but authentication in this develop is at API level, so users can not be shared between APIs, the reason is because AutoApi uses MongoDB users instead of using a collection to store them, so they are related to a database and AutoApi consider a database as an API.

Configuration file

As AutoApi uses MongoDB to store the data, it is necessary to know the location of the database, by default AutoApi will try to connect to the default connection of MongoDB (localhost, 27017) unless a configuration file is given.

The configuration file stores the configuration for the MongoDB connection (including the authentication credentials), there is a template on this repository that show the syntax and the options, the template is called server.cfg.default.

AutoApi can receive a configuration file using two methods, one is defining an environment variable with the name AUTOAPI_SETTINGS where the value is the file path. The other way is passing the parameter config_path to the constructor of AutoApi object with the file path.

If you are going to use the given script to run AutoApi, you can provide the configuration file as a parameter with the flag -f, that script uses one of the previous options.

AutoApi features

Authentication & Authorization

AutoApi authentication is optional, by default it is not activated. To activate it is necessary:

• MongoDB auth activated
• AutoApi configuration file filled
• Run AutoApi server with --auth flag

Authentication

Each API has their own users, so users have to logged specifying the API in the request:

POST /login
Content-Type: application/json

{
  "api": "example",
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "password": "pass"
}

The response will contain a session token in the headers and body:

X-Email: [e-mail]
X-Token: 123456

{
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "token": "123456"
}

To logout, users have to specify the API too:

POST /logout
Content-Type: application/json
X-Email: [e-mail]
X-Token: 123456

{"api": "example"}

Users and Authorization

Only admin users can create more users specifying the API and CRUD roles:

POST /user
Content-Type: application/json
X-Email: ADMIN_USER
X-Token: ADMIN_USER_TOKEN

{
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "password": "pass",
  "api": "example",
  "roles": ["read", "update"]
}

The last request creates the user [e-mail] and authorizes him to read and update the example API without any API creation request.

Each user can update his own password and only an admin user can change other users password . The change can be done using the following request:

POST /password
Content-Type: application/json
X-Email: USER
X-Token: USER_TOKEN

{
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "password": "new-pass",
  "api": "example"
}

It is important to note that the request needs the email parameter to select to user that will change the password.

Finally, only an admin user can change the authorization roles for a particular user using the following request:

POST /roles
Content-Type: application/json
X-Email: ADMIN_USER
X-Token: ADMIN_USER_TOKEN

{
  "email": "[e-mail]",
  "api": "example",
  "roles": {
    "update": false,
    "delete": true
  }
}

Collections and Resources

API

To use an API in AutoApi it is not necessary to create it, it is created on demand and there is no operations related for path /api.

API collection

To use and API collection in AutoApi it is not necessary to create it, it is also created on demand.

CRUD collection's resources

It is important to remember that if AutoApi's authentication is enabled then only logged users, with the respective authorization, can CRUD API's resources.

A good API REST example is to show how to mark as a classic all the movies where actor_1 appears.

PATCH /example/actors/actor_1/movies
Content-Type: application/json
X-Email: [e-mail]
X-Token: USER_TOKEN

{"classic": true}

More info about REST:

• http://www.restapitutorial.com/lessons/httpmethods.html
• http://restful-api-design.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

Dependencies and configuration

OpenSSL Ubuntu dependencies

$ sudo apt-get install libffi-dev libssl-dev

Python dependencies

I strongly recommend you to use virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper.

$ workon autoapi
(autoapi) $ python setup.py develop

MongoDB

AutoApi doesn't required modifications on MongoDB configuration to handle APIs, collectios or resources. But, if you want to activate Authentication and Authorization, as AutoApi uses MongoDB users, it is necessary to set auth=true in your mongodb.cfg or run mongod with the flag --auth. If MongoDB was started with the authentication flag but doesn't have an admin user, AutoApi will try to create him using the given configuration file.

Related info:

• http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/install-mongodb-on-ubuntu/
• http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/authentication
• http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/core/authorization
• http://docs.mongodb.org/manual/tutorial/add-user-administrator

Running AutoApi

To start the service AutoApi implements the __main__.py file, so after installing AutoApi it will be created the executable called autoapi and the module auto_api. Also, remember that if you want to run AutoApi with authentication, you must first turn on the authentication in MongoDB and then provide the flags -a (or --auth) and -f (or --config) with a configuration file based on server.cfg.default (located on this repository) to the following commands:

(api) $ autoapi [[-a] -f server.cfg]

or

(api) $ python -m auto_api [[-a] -f server.cfg]

Testing AutoApi

To run the AutoApi test there is a script called run_tests.py. This script will automatically start and stop two MongoDB servers (one with authentication enabled) for testing purpose only.

$ ./run_tests.py [nose-parameters]