REST api

[Joshua Elkino]

I've been searching the web but i cannot find a tutorial in how to call REST methods on a server.
Looking to integrate some geocoding and social network methods on my site. Anyone have any tip/tuts out there?

[Paul Clapham]

Those "REST" methods are just plain old HTTP requests. Much simpler than other forms of web service. We are doing geocoding where I work, we send the address to Google and (usually) get latitude and longitude back buried in an XML document. We use the Apache HttpClient software to do that and there's about 25 lines of code.

[Joshua Elkino]

Mind showing me an example? Are you using the javascript api? I want to do this on the server side since i dont trust js too much

[Joe Ess]

Accessing the Google Geocoder with Java is simple. Here is how to construct the URL.
Be aware that there's a throttle on how many requests you can make per minute (you'll get HTTP errors if you send too many) and per day (50000 if I remember correctly)

[Joshua Elkino]

Joe,
I'm quite aware of the JavaScript methods to use gMaps, but i'm looking for a server side (JAVA) equivalent, thus my inquiry for how to call REST methods.

Lets take OpenSocial API as another example.. it can be called using JS, REST, and RPC... http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/docs/index.html
how would i use their API?

[Joshua Elkino]

Well i finally found something simple!
http://developer.yahoo.com/java/howto-reqRestJava.html

Hope if anyone has a similar Q they can just look at this page for a simple example and modify it to work with their needs.

[Joshua Elkino]

For a real example

String address = street1 + " " + city + " " + state + " " + zip;  
address = address.replaceAll("\\s", "%20");
String REST = "http://maps.google.com/maps/geo?q=" + address + "&output=csv&key=<YOUR KEY HERE>";
System.out.println(REST);
HttpClient client = new HttpClient();
        GetMethod method = new GetMethod(REST);
 
// Send GET request
        int statusCode = client.executeMethod(method);
        if (statusCode == 200) {
        InputStream rstream = null;
        rstream = method.getResponseBodyAsStream();
        BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(rstream));
        String line = "";
        while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
        String[] results = line.split(",");
        lat = results[2];
        lng = results[3];        
        }
        br.close();
        }
}