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REST transform

This transform can communicate with a REST service using HTTP requests.

Note that by default the REST transform will only attempt to parse responses with content-type “application/json”, if the REST API provides other types of valid JSON, you can specify which in the json_content_types property of the associated REST system.

Responses which aren’t recognised as JSON will make the REST transform emit entities with a property containing the raw response body and - optionally - the content-type of the response for further processing with DTL and/or HTTP or REST transform(s).

Note that the shape of the entities piped to this transform must conform to certain criteria, see the notes later in the section.

Also note that, in contrast to the REST sink, the REST transform also supports the GET operation.

Prototype

{
    "type": "rest",
    "system" : "rest-system",
    "operation": "the-default-operation",
    "properties": {
       "the-default": "properties"
    },
    "payload": {
       "the-default": "payload"
    },
    "trigger_on": {
        "key":"_trigger",
        "value": "some-value*"
    },
    "rate_limiting_retries": 3,
    "rate_limiting_delay": 60,
    "response_property": "the-property-name-to-put-the-response-in",
    "response_include_content_type": false,
    "payload_property": "the-property-the-response-resides-in",
    "id_expression": "{{ jinja_expression_for_the_id.property }}",
    "updated_expression": "{{ jinja_expression_for_the_updated_property }}",
    "ignored_status_codes": "404,444-450,501-599"
    "if_transform_empty": "allow"
}

Properties

Property	Type	Description	Default	Req
system	String	The id of the REST system to use.		Yes
side_effects	Boolean	Set to false if the transform does not have side-effects. A side-effect means that it causes changes to the system that it talks to. The intention of this property is to prevent inadvertent changes to the system by features like pipe preview. You can set this to false if you’re sure your transform is free from side-effects or if you don’t mind changes happening when previewing a pipe.	true
response_property	String	The name of the property to store the result returned from the REST service. Note that if the replace_entity property is set to true and the service returns JSON data, this JSON data will be returned as entities. If the data type is not JSON, the result will be an empty entity with the same _id as the original with the response_property set to the contents of the request reponse body as a string. If replace_entity is set to false, the response_property will be added to the original entity and set to the contents of the request response body as a string or a parsed JSON structure if that is the returned content type.	"response"
response_headers_property	String	The name of the property to put the response headers in when emitting entities. Note that this property can be defined in the REST system operation configuration as well. The configuration in the transform will take precedence if both are defined. Also note that this property will only be set if replace_entity is set to false.
response_status_property	String	The name of the property to put the response status code in when emitting entities. Note that this property can be defined in the REST system operation configuration as well. The configuration in the transform will take precedence if both are defined. Also note that this property will only be set if replace_entity is set to false.
replace_entity	Boolean	This property controls if the entity should be replaced with the JSON contents of the response or if the original entity should be kept. See the response_property for more detail on how this works. The default is to keep the original entity and add a response property holding the result of the REST operation. Note that this property should normally not be altered, it’s primarily intended for backwards compatibility with ported HTTP transforms. When set to true the id_expression, updated_expression and error_expression expressions are not evaluated and the response is passed through directly in the form returned by the system operation (assumed to be a JSON object or list of objects).	false
response_include_content_type	Boolean	This property controls if the output entity should include the Content-Type of the response in a content-type property. Note that this property is ignored if replace_entity is set to true and the response is JSON.	false
operation	String	The default id of the operation to use if not present in the entity.
operations	Object	An object containing the properties used for the operation specified in the transform configuration or in the entity. See the Operation properties section for details. Note that you can also define an operations property on the REST system. If present in multiple places then the transform version will take precedence. You need to specify an operations section in at least one of them. If multiple pipes use the same operation configuration you should consider storing it on the system so they can be reused. Note that secrets are only allowed in the operations property defined on the REST system.
properties	Object	Any non-payload properties you need can be specified in the properties property. You can then address these in the Jinja templates for the operation or source using a “{{ properties.key_name }}” syntax. Note that if a properties object is present in the entity, the properties object in the transform configuration will be ignored.
trigger_on (experimental)	Object	A dictionary with two properties: "key" (optional, defaults to "_trigger") and "value". The "key" should point to a property in the entity (it supports path notation) and "value" should contain a value that this property should have to be passed into the transform. The "value" supports wildcards (“*”) for substring matching. If the "key" doesn’t exist or the "value" does not match the corresponding value in the entity, the entity will be passed through without being transformed. Note that this property is experimental and may be changed or removed.
payload	Object, string or array	The value to use as payload for the operation if not present in the entity. Note that this property can be defined in the specified operation section of the REST system as well. If the payload exists in the entity, then the one in the entity will take precedence over any payload defined on transform or system operation (in that order). This property supports the Jinja template (https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/) syntax with the named variables properties, url, request_params, entity and headers available to the template. If the operation supports paging then previous_body, previous_request_headers, previous_params and previous_headers (response headers) are available for all page requests except the first. In addition page (integer, starting at 0) and is_first_page (a boolean flag) are available for all requests in paged operations. Tip: use Jinja’s “is defined” tests for these variables to set default values for the first page.
payload_property	String	The JSON response sub-property to use as the source of the emitted entities. Note that this property can be defined in the specified operation section of the REST system as well. The transform configuration will take precedence if defined. This property can express a “path” into the response using a dot as path separator, i.e. foo.bar. Note that a if a “non-path” version of the property can be found in the response body it will take precedence over any property found by traversing the path using the dot notation.
id_expression	String	The property supports the Jinja template (https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/) syntax with the entities properties available to the templating context. It can be used to add _id properties to the emitted entities if missing from the transform response. Note that this property can be defined in the specified operation section of the REST system as well. The transform configuration will take precedence if defined. The bound parameters available to this template are body, url, request_params, properties, entity, source_entity and headers. If the operation supports paging then previous_body, previous_request_headers, previous_params and previous_headers (response headers) are available for all page requests except the first. In addition page (integer, starting at 0) and is_first_page (a boolean flag) are available for all requests in paged operations. Tip: use Jinja’s “is defined” tests for these variables to set default values for the first page.
updated_expression	String	The property supports the Jinja template (https://palletsprojects.com/p/jinja/) syntax with the entities properties available to the templating context. It can be used to add _updated properties to the emitted entities if missing from the transform response. Note that this property can alternatively be defined in the specified operation section of the REST system. The transform configuration will take precedence if defined. This template supports the same named variables as id_expression.
allowed_status_codes	String	An expression in the form of single values or value ranges of HTTP status codes that will be allowed to be passed through by the transform. The values are either comma separated integer values or a range of values with a hyphen separator (i.e. a single - character). The start and end of a range are inclusive, i.e. 200-299 includes both 200 and 299. Whitespaces are not allowed in the expression. Note that 200-299 are the default status codes and any response status codes other than this will make the transform fail. See the complimentary ignored_status_codes if you want to omit non-ok responses instead of them making the transform fail or passing them through. Also note that the ranges in ignored_status_codes cannot overlap with allowed_status_codes. Warning If you allow other status codes than the default, make sure that these are dealt with downstream.	"200-299"
ignored_status_codes	String	An expression in the form of single values or value ranges of HTTP status codes that will be ignored by the transform. HTTP responses with status codes matching this list will result in the response being omitted from the result. The values are either comma separated integer values or a range of values with a hyphen separator (i.e. a single - character). The start and end of a range are inclusive, i.e. 400-403 includes both 400 and 403. Whitespaces are not allowed in the expression. See the complimentary allowed_status_codes if you want to pass through any non-ok responses instead of skipping them. Also note that the ranges in ignored_status_codes cannot overlap with allowed_status_codes. Warning Any response with status codes listed here will be discarded with no traces to be found, making it next to impossible to audit the pipe.
if_transform_empty	Enum<String>	Determines the behaviour of the pipe when the REST transform does not produce any entities. The default value is "accept" which means that any previously emitted entities might be deletion tracked if the pipe is doing a full run, and the sink is a dataset sink. If set to "fail" the pipe will instead fail if the transform unexpectedly produce no entities thus preventing potential deletion tracking downstream.	"accept"
rate_limiting_retries	Integer	If set and the REST service returns a HTTP 429 error code, the request will be retried the number of times indicated. The time between retries can be adjusted by setting rate_limiting_delay.
rate_limiting_delay	Integer	If rate_limiting_retries is set on either the transform or on the REST system, and a retry is triggered the time to wait before retrying can be set by this value. If specified on both the system and transform, the transform value takes precedence.	1
trace	Boolean or Object	This can be set to true to log the http requests and responses the REST transform sends and receives. This information will be added to a “trace” property in the pump-completed and pump-failed events in the pipe execution log. By default the http headers and the first few bytes of the body is logged. If you need more fine-grained control of the logging, you can set trace to be an object and set the various trace.log_* sub-properties (see below for a description of each sub-property).	false	No
trace.log_request_headers	Boolean	If the trace property is an object this sub-property specifies if the request headers will be logged in the pump-completed/pump-completed events in the execution-log.	true	No
trace.log_request_body_maxsize	Integer	If the trace property is an object this property specifies how many bytes of the request body should be logged in the pump-completed/pump-completed events in the execution-log.	100	No
trace.log_response_headers	Boolean	If the trace property is an object this sub-property specifies if the response headers will be logged in the pump-completed/pump-completed events in the execution-log.	true	No
trace.log_response_body_maxsize	Integer	If the trace property is an object this property specifies how many bytes of the response body should be logged in the pump-completed/pump-completed events in the execution-log.	100	No
trace.log_secret_redacted_bytes	Integer	If the trace property is an object this property specifies how many bytes of each $SECRET will be redacted in the pump-completed/pump-completed events in the execution-log. The purpose of this setting is to redact enough of the secrets to render them safe to log, but to potentially leave some of the secret for debugging purposes. A value of -1 means to redact all bytes of the secrets. Note that the redaction is only a best-effort attempt to prevent secrets from ending up in the logs, there may be cases where secrets leak through in any case, so it is best to always check that what ends up being logged looks ok.	600	No

Expected entity shape

The entities must be transformed into a particular form before being piped to the REST transform. The general form expected is:

{
  "_id": "1",
  "properties": {
      "foo": "bar",
      "zoo": 1,
      "baz": [1,2,3]
  },
  "operation": "some-named-operation",
  "payload": "<some>string-value</some>"
}

Property	Type	Description	Default	Req
properties	Object	Any non-payload properties you need should go into the toplevel child entity properties. You can then address these properties in the Jinja templates for operation url properties using the “{{ properties.key_name }}” syntax.
operation	String	The contents of this property must refer to one of the named operations registered with the transform’s REST system. Note that if no default value is defined in the transform configuration, this property is required.
payload	String or Object	The payload for the operation specified. It can be a string or an object. You can also omit it, in which case the empty string will be used instead (for example for “DELETE” methods). All string payloads will be encoded as UTF-8.

Example entities:

String as payload:

{
  "_id": "1",
  "properties": {
      "foo": "bar",
      "zoo": 1,
      "baz": [1,2,3]
  },
  "operation": "some-named-operation",
  "payload": "<some>string-value</some>"
}

Object as payload (set operation payload-type to “json”, “json-transit” or “form” in the REST system the transform uses):

{
  "_id": "2",
  "properties": {
      "foo": "bar",
      "zoo": 1,
      "baz": [1,2,3]
  },
  "operation": "some-other-operation",
  "payload": {
      "payload": "property",
      "child": {
        "foo": "bar"
      }
  }
}

Multi-part form request if payload-type is “form”, otherwise use “json” or “json-transit” for this type of entity:

{
  "_id": "3",
  "operation": "some-third-operation",
  "payload": [
    {
      "foo": "bar"
    },
    {
      "zoo": "foo"
    }
  ]
}

Example configuration

See the REST system example section for how to configure the operations we refer to in these examples:

{
    "type" : "pipe",
    "transform" : {
        "type" : "rest",
        "system" : "our-rest-service",
        "operation": "post-man",
        "properties": {
             "collection_name": "study-group-2"
        }
    }
}

Example input entities:

[
  {
      "_id": "bob",
      "operation": "get-man",
      "properties": {
          "collection_name": "study-group-1"
      }
  }
]

Example output entities:

[
  {
      "_id": "bob",
      "operation": "get-man",
      "properties": {
          "collection_name": "study-group-1"
      },
      "response": {
          "name": "Bob Maker"
          "email": "bob.maker@example.com"
      }
  }
]

Pagination support

See the the REST source examples for how to use pagination with the REST transform - the configuration set up is the same as with the REST source.

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