CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

so... I've got the backbonejs library to play very nicly with drupal 6 services module

and my mind turned back at long last to the civi V3 api - with great glee i'm might add

I'm just wondering if the restful interface the http metons get/push/post/delete etc

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/671118/what-exactly-is-restful-programming

I had a moment of realy excitement thinking about hook backbone right up to the innards of civicrm... but backbone expects a restful server... so do i need to write a wrapper? maybe something others could be interested in?

The wrapper is CRM.api() and it's pretty wonderful
Being more restful is something we probably should target for API v4, although as X mentioned, REST was conceived as an abstract theory, but putting it into practice in the real world tends to raise a lot of questions that the theory doesn't address.
Take a look in the js folder in Civi, esp at the crm.backbone.js and crm.designerapp.js files, and the related model and view files to see how we're doing it so far.
Also this will help you with some of the nitty gritty js-in-civi stuff: http://wiki.civicrm.org/confluence/display/CRMDOC43/Javascript+Reference

4.2: cj().crmAPI()
4.3: CRM.api()
Also as of 4.3.1 it is quite easy to use CRM.api outside the context of a Civi page (i.e. in a drupal module, WP plugin, etc). Just do:
civicrm_initialize();
CRM_Core_Resources::singleton()->addCoreResources();
and then all our javascript magic will be at your fingertips.

Take a look in the js folder in Civi, esp at the crm.backbone.js

Erich - looks like Coleman has already been implementing backbone with Civi (albeit in 4.3) -

great - so that's got to be the next thing for me to get my head around then

hopefully with out recent server upgrades I should be back up to recent revision of civi

watched a one hour video on marionettejs last night - looks good... i was feeling a bit "undirected" with backbone... so something with some opinions would help

also checked my local install and couldn't find crm.backbone.js locally so wil fish around online for the current dev branch (I'll see what I can negotiate with our long-sufferening contractor)

but how about a thin layer between the drupal services module and the v3 api to do "proper rest" - ie using DELETE, PATCH etc?? rechecke the backbone docs and backbone definitely seems to use these

but how about a thin layer between the drupal services module and the v3 api to do "proper rest" - ie using DELETE, PATCH etc?? rechecke the backbone docs and backbone definitely seems to use these

Still not sure what is your aim of using PATCH/PUT/DELETE http methods over the existing POST+ action param. Could you detail?

Anyway, if you want to add these new methods, I'd suggest you to patch civi directly, so whatever developed could end up being used with the other CMS too. My concern is that given how widely different the urls are between CMS (and some being not so nice looking), I'm not sure I see the benefit of handling extra http methods.

As backbone allows to adjust how the server api is called (eg. to override doSave or the sync method) it's easy to match what "native civi" offers. Basically, you just have to use CRM.api() and it will take care of setting the right params over the wire transparently.

Check out js/view/crm.designer.js to see how it was done for the profile.

X+

thanks Eileen will do

@Xavier... I guess just looking at a clean solution - was able to hook up backbone to the drupal services module with full CRUD verbs... (this is crustly old drupal 6!)

Backbone can cope with "legacy services" ... but v3 api is a bit young to be getting old isn't it?

but I wasn't aware civicrm already had a backbone extension so if that's done awesome but that still leaves all the other clients

I'm really looking forward to being able to hook into the v3 api!!!! am headiing to git hub right now

:-)