Overview¶

Resource URLs¶

Resources are arranged in consistent, clean URLs underneath /api/. The top-level “root” resource is at /api/ and is used as a starting point for finding other resources.

It’s highly recommended that clients browse through the resources by following their links, rather than hard-coding the paths. This will help keep your client forward-compatible with future versions of Review Board, in case any of these paths end up changing.

Hyperlinks¶

Resources are linked together using hyperlinks in the payload. A resource will often have a links key with keys for each thing that links off of it. These will in turn have keys for the URL and for the HTTP method that works on that URL.

Often, the keys in links will be the name of the resource, but there are some special keys:

• create - A link to the resource list that an HTTP POST can be made on to create a new resource.
• delete - A link to the resource that an HTTP DELETE can be made on to delete the resource.
• next - A link to the next resource (or list of resources) in a list.
• prev - A link to the previous resource (or list of resources) in a list.
• self - A link to the official place for the resource. This will be the resource the link is in, not necessarily the resource accessed on the page (think nested resources in a payload).
• update - A link to the resource that an HTTP PUT can be made on to update the resource.

For example:

{
  links: {
    self: {
      href: '/path/to/whatever',
      method: 'GET'
    },
    create: {
      href: '/path/to/whatever',
      method: 'POST'
    },
    some_sub_resource: {
      href: '/path/to/whatever/some-sub-resource',
      method: 'GET'
    }
  }
}

HTTP Methods¶

All requests to a resource are made using standard HTTP methods. The type of request depends on the method used. Not all resources respond to all methods, and any invalid method used on a resource will result in a 405 Method Not Allowed.

GET requests are used when retrieving information. These requests will never cause data to be modified on the server.

POST requests are used for posting brand new content, such as uploading a diff or creating a review request. The supplied content must be represented as multi-part form data.

PUT requests are used to update an existing resource. For example, changing the summary of a review request’s draft. Like POST requests, the new content must be represented as multi-part form data. However, only the fields that the client wants to change need to be specified. Any fields not specified will be left alone.

DELETE requests are used to delete a resource. A deleted resource cannot be undeleted.

MIME Types¶

Review Board can return content in different formats. In order to control which format your client receives the data in, you should make use of HTTP Accept headers.

An HTTP Accept header lists the mimetypes that the client wishes to receive. The list is comma-separated and can contain multiple mimetypes, though typically a client will only need to specify one or two.

The most common mimetypes your client may want to handle are application/json and application/xml, though some resources may be able to return custom data in mimetypes other than these.

An example of this header might be:

Accept: application/json, */*

The */* matches any mimetype. The above header would tell Review Board to return JSON preferably, but anything is fine.

You can also specify priority levels by appending ;q=priority to the mimetype, where priority is the priority level between 0 and 1. A value of 0 means that the server should never send that mimetype.

For example:

Accept: application/json;q=1, text/plain;q=0.2, application/xml;q=0, */*

In this example, JSON is preferred. Plain text is okay, but the client isn’t very excited about it. Anything else is okay, as long as it’s not XML.

HTTP Status Codes¶

Every response has an HTTP status code. The following are used:

Payloads¶

Responses will be returned based on the HTTP Accept header. All resources can return JSON or XML, with JSON being the default.

Every payload has a stat key. The value will be either ok (for success) or fail (for a failed request).

Payloads for failed requests will also contain a err key mapping to a dictionary containing code and msg keys. code will contain a numeric error code that can be used for determining the particular type of error. msg will contain a human-readable error string from the server.

{
  stat: "ok",
  calculated_result: 42
}

{
  stat: "fail",
  err: {
    code: 205,
    msg: "A repository path must be specified"
  }
}

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<rsp>
 <stat>ok</stat>
 <calculated_result>42</calculated_result>
</rsp>

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<rsp>
 <stat>fail</stat>
 <err>
  <code>205</code>
  <msg>A repository path must be specified</msg>
 </err>
</rsp>