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We've been able to explore fairly easily
just using GET requests in a browser.

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Now there comes a time in every young REST
API's life when you want to simulate what

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it feels like to actually be used.

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You wanna imagine what it feels like for
a client of your API.

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Well, we're at that point now.

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So there are a few command line tools
that will let you post, delete and

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put data to specific resources, and I've
linked to those in the teacher's notes.

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A very popular tool in the arena of
API manual testing is named Postman.

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We'll get that installed here in a few.

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Since our application is HAL, or

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Hypermedia Application Language compliant,
we can also use a HAL browser.

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There is a very nice packaged up
version that we'll take a look at.

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It's pretty amazing.

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Let's go explore.

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Okay, so Postman is a Chrome extension and

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I've put its installation
instructions in the teachers notes.

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Now this is what it looks like currently.

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Yours might look a little bit different,
but

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don't worry,
this tool just keeps getting better.

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If things work a little bit different,
I guarantee it's for the better.

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So Postman does an amazing
job of keeping track of

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what you do history wise over here.

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And it really helps to
produce valid queries.

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So just to show it off,
let's take a quick look at courses.

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So I'm gonna go to http://localhost:8080
and go to courses.

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And I'm going to send a GET request.

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So we're gonna press Send, awesome.

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So here's the response.

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And one of the really cool things
about this is if you click,

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you can click these links.

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And what it will do is it will
make a new tab up here, and

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it will do the next thing
that you want to do.

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It automatically prefilled that for
me, so we can click Send, so

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we can kind of navigate through the API.

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Pretty nice, right?

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So let's go ahead, and this is this
course here, Groovy for Neckbeards.

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Let's go ahead and
write a review for this course.

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This is course number five here.

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So the way that we add a review is we
go to our reviews collection, which,

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remember, is that /reviews.

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And we want to make a new one so
we're gonna to make a POST, okay?

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And we're gonna send, in the body,
we're gonna send the review actually so

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we want raw, and
we're gonna send application JSON, right?

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That's the way that our REST API has
decided that it's gonna communicate.

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So we're gonna choose proper JSON,
and we're gonna say reading is,

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let's see, Groovy for
Neckbeards is a four.

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And the description we'll give a proper

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neckbeard description is Well, actually.

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Right, so in order to send what
course we're talking about,

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the way that Spring Hedo us
works out of the gate is you

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pass either the URL for
the course resource or he URI.

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So let's go ahead and let's pass the URI.

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So we're gonna say that the course,

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that's the course property
that's on there, is /courses/5.

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That's gonna use that URL to find exactly
what we were talking about, right, so

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that's the link that we're passing around.

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Again, remember this is down here.

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courses/5, courses/5.

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So we're gonna add that.

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So we're doing a POST, and
when I switched that to JSON application,

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look what it did.

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It set our request header to say
Content-Type application/json.

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Awesome, did that for us.

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Okay, so then let's go ahead and
click Send.

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And we got a bad request, which is good,
to see an error like this.

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Look, I got a bad JSON.

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Bad, bad JSON.

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There we go, let's try this one more time.

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I'm gonna click send,
and boom, 201 created.

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And you'll see here that it's 4, and we'll
actually, and look, it's got a new ID.

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So there's a reviews/102,
and you can go see that.

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And if you go to reviews/102 by clicking
it, I'm gonna click send again,

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you see that it says, well, actually, and
here is the course that was reviewed.

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Awesome, so if we come and
do Send, and see,

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we can navigate all
the way around our API.

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You know what, I saw something when I
was looking at this reviews list here.

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I saw something.

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Down here it says this
this profile link here.

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So it says profile/reviews.

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So I'm gonna ahead and
click that, cuz why not?

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Cuz we can navigate around.

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Now let's see what this is.

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So this is ALPS, it's what is known as
ALPS, application level profile semantics.

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And it's a standard format that helps
you to document your application in

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a standard way.

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And we have one up here for
courses as well.

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So if you go to profile/courses, so
this is the course representation and

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it's got these different descriptors and
it's a format.

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It's a standard format.

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And there's tools that consume this and
generate documentation.

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Even live sites that let you
interact with your API live.

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Now this is just one of several standards.

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So if you want to make this thing a little
bit more specific to what were pushing out

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if we wanted to customize this at all, I
bet you can guess what we would do, right?

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So what we would do was,
we would add a properties file and

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do some configuration there.

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So these are actually in
another configuration file,

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much like application properties, so
if we make a new file in resources here,

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And we call it rest-messages.properties.

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And the way that this works is you do

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rest.description and
then the name of the entity, which,

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in our case,
we wanna change that course page, right.

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So we'll say course.

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Now at this top level, what we
wanna do is we wanna say course= so

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we can explain what this is here.

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So this is a collection of online courses.

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So if somebody was looking at this,
they would know what we meant by course,

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like it's not a meal.

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It's a collection of online courses,
because that could still be misconstrued.

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So let's go ahead and do this.

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So we can say specifically
the course.title.

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We can help explain a little bit more,
document the name of the course.

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And then let's do
rest.description.course.url.

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And this is link of where
to find the course online.

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So now let's go ahead,
let's restart our server.

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Let's go,
make sure that that updated our ALPS.

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So when you click Send again,
we're on profile courses.

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And boom, here it's talking about,

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now we have documentation that
we're providing for our API.

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Pretty slick, right?

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And again, there's tools that read this,
but not everybody reads ALPS.

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There's another standard
called JSON schema, and

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it would be nice if we did that too,
right?

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So we could probably write that,
but before you do that, I know,

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this is getting a little ridiculous.

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It can generate that too.

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So simply by adding
an accept header in here.

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If we come up to our headers here and
we add Accept, and we say application,

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this is not in the dropdown,
cuz it's sort of a new thing, schema+json.

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And when we refresh, it's gonna change
to match this other standard and

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we didn't have to write that.

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And we didn't even have to research it,
and look, it's producing and

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it's using our description.

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Super powerful.

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So cool, another standard that we didn't
have to research, adhere to, and/or test.

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Again, producing these is not what
our client is paying us for, right?

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Our course review client,
they're not paying for this.

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But I am so glad that the Spring data REST
team has taken care of this for us so

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that we don't need to write it,
we can focus on the business logic.

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Now more on this and
other formats in the teacher's notes.

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Speaking of other formats,
why don't we take a look

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at the awesome tool Howl Browser,
right after this quick break.