restCall

The restCall task is a powerful and flexible task for obtaining and posting data to and from external API data sources. If a specialized adapter is not available, restCall is typically the first task to consider for interacting with an external data source.

Potential use case

You are developing an employee on-boarding automation that creates user accounts in external systems via API. One restCall task retrieves the list of users from an API-accessible data store. Another restCall task creates user accounts via API calls to the external systems.

Properties

Example 1 — GET request

• uri is statically set to https://deckofcardsapi.com/api/deck/new/shuffle/?
• verb is GET
• user, password, headers, and body are not required by this API
• responseHeaders is true

The outgoing response contains deck information. Because responseHeaders is true, the response also includes header data such as content-type.

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{
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  "success": true,
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  "deck_id": "tay82vn7nlsu",
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  "remaining": 52,
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  "shuffled": true
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}

Example 2 — POST request

• uri is https://petstore.swagger.io/v2/pet
• verb is POST
• user, password, and headers are not required
• body is required by this API:

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{
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  "id": 7777778888889956565,
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  "category": { "id": 0, "name": "Pronghorn" },
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  "name": "Delores",
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  "photoUrls": ["http://example.com/images/Pronghorn01.png"],
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  "tags": [{ "id": 0, "name": "string" }],
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  "status": "available"
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}

• responseHeaders is false

The response confirms the pet record was created. The exact content varies by API.

Example 3 — GET request with headers

• uri is https://api.sunrise-sunset.org/json?lat=33.791570&lng=-84.389510&date=today
• verb is GET
• user, password, and body are not required
• headers is {"Content-Type": "application/json; charset=utf-8"}
• responseHeaders is true

The response contains sunrise and sunset time information for the Itential home office in Atlanta, GA:

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{
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  "results": {
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    "sunrise": "10:46:46 AM",
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    "sunset": "12:41:22 AM",
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    "solar_noon": "5:44:04 PM",
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    "day_length": "13:54:36",
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    "civil_twilight_begin": "10:19:17 AM",
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    "civil_twilight_end": "1:08:51 AM",
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    "nautical_twilight_begin": "9:45:55 AM",
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    "nautical_twilight_end": "1:42:14 AM",
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    "astronomical_twilight_begin": "9:10:21 AM",
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    "astronomical_twilight_end": "2:17:48 AM"
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  },
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  "status": "OK"
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}