A few questions about rest API

[Alan Etkin]

Hi all

I'm new to py4web's rest API

Is there a way to use compound GET queries in the same request?

Something like logical AND/OR SQL statements

/superheroes/api/superhero?name.eq=Superman&superpower.eq=Flight

Also, it would be nice add if the docs covered a list of available comparison operators

Regards

Alan

[Alan Etkin]

Regarding compound statements, it was answered here (thanks)

https://groups.google.com/g/py4web/c/7tyBV4fgua0

About covering the comparison operators in the docs, found that rest API supports as of today:

eq, ne, qt, lt, ge, le, startswith, contains and in, plus prefixing with not to negate the expression

I'm working in a spanish tutorial for the api so I will cover them there

Many thanks and have a nice weekend

[Kathy Botlar]

Looking for the same

[Massimo DiPierro]

Currently the RestAPI only support the and (&) operator and the nor operator. The syntax ir

https://..../{tablename}?{field1}.{op1}=value1&{field2}.{op2}=value2&not.{field3}.{op3}=value3

where op can be one of eq, ne, lt, gt, le, ge, startwith, in, contains.

It is intentionally designed to not allow arbitrary queries since it can result in ddos attacks.

If you do want arbitrary queries you can do:

db.define_table(

"thing",

Field("name"))

from pydal.querybuilder import QueryBuilder

@action("search/<tablename>")

@action.uses(auth)

def search(tablename):

# maybe if not auth.user_id: raise HTTP(403)

# maybe if not tablename in allowed_tables: raise HTTP(403)

if not tablename in db: raise HTTP(400)

table = db[tablename]

builder = QueryBuilder(table)

try:

query = builder.parse(request.GET.get("q", ""))

items = db(query).select().as_list()

except:

return HTTP(400)

return {"items": items}

This allows arbitrary searches like 

search/thing?q=name is Max or (name is Tim and id > 1) or name contains x

The RestAPI is designed for simple structured queries with the ability to manipulate the format of the respose.

The QueryBuilder is designed to build an arbitrary query from a string.

Perhaps there should a superset of both but I am not convinced there is one solution that will make everybody happy without add even more magic and complexity.