In recent years, the use of RESTful APIs has become pervasive, replacing XML/SOAP web services as the integration mechanism of choice for most service providers.

The range of these APIs are vast: almost every major player in web-delivered services now exposes large areas of their functionality through them. Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Amazon, eBay, SalesForce, Yahoo, PayPal, Wikipedia, the list goes on.

Data Access has partnered with DataFlex developer Mike Peat to create the OAuth, RESTFul & Web API Integration component to make such capabilities available to DataFlex developers.

The software published at the above link will enable you to build these capabilities into your web applications. There are also sample applications and links to documentation to help guide you through the process of using OAuth and RESTful APIs.

The OAuth and RESTful API component only functions with DataFlex 18.1 and up; prior revisions did not have support for the necessary HTTP verbs. The UChar array functions, new in DataFlex 18.1, also play an important part in handling the large amounts of data which can be involved in some operations, as well as providing a reliable mechanism for dealing with those that work with binary data.