Discussions
2 Questions About the iMIS APIs
Dear colleagues,
I hope this email finds you well! I am reaching out to see if anyone has insight into the following:
Instead of updating, deleting, etc. from panel sources using the APIs (which is fairly straightforward), does anyone have any insight into performing an update, delete, and edit using an IQA ? If so, would you be able to provide C# or PHP examples demonstrating this process?
Alternately, worst case scenario, is there a comprehensive list of panel sources by name or a better way to get a handle on that data structure?
Last, but not least, if there are any webinars or resources that you recommend I explore, I would greatly appreciate your suggestions! My goal is to avoid reinventing the wheel and to leverage existing knowledge and best practices.
Thank you in advance for any help or guidance you can provide. Your assistance is highly valued and appreciated.
Hi Bob,
To answer your first question: I'm sorry but IQA is a read-only concept regardless of whether you're using the API or a UI-based convention. It would be pretty powerful to alter data via IQA, but the technical task of providing sufficient safeguards to user data in the event of a bad query is pretty complex and not something we are contemplating for development.
Second question: I think there are probably ways to inspect available panels via the API. Can you please provide us a bit of a description of what you trying to do, criteria you might want to use to filter for the panels you want, etc. Also, and this might help with your training question, AI tools can frequently give you surprisingly accurate info about our API in a way that is a bit more task oriented than our documentation is structured for.
Bing CoPilot gave me the following result for "how do you get a list of panel sources using the imis API?". This response seems on point to me though I haven't tested it:
To retrieve a list of panel sources using the iMIS API, you have a few options:
ObjectMetaData Table:
Prior to upgrading, ensure that customizer tables (e.g., ABC_123) without backing business objects are deleted from the ObjectMetaData table. The iMIS upgrade will handle the rest1.
Panel sources are typically defined in the ObjectMetaData table.
API Endpoint:
You can use the iMIS API to get data for a specific panel source. For example, the /api/metadata endpoint provides metadata for panel data sources2.
Unfortunately, direct POSTing to the metadata endpoint is not supported, but you can retrieve information about panel sources.
Panel Designer:
In the Panel Designer, you can import existing user-defined tables directly as panel sources. Additionally, your Activity table data is automatically available for use and extension3.
Remember to consult the iMIS documentation or explore the available connectors for more details4. If you need further assistance, feel free to ask! π
I'm sure ChatGPT, Bard or any of the other robots shifting around out there could give you a similar answers if you don't have Bing.
We used to have REST API training available, but I didn't find any in our current course list.
You might check that link and see if there's an email you can hit up for more info about whether or not the client success team might have something available to help you, though.
Sorry this sat for a couple of days. Thanks.
Thanks so, so much - I didn't want to take a ton of time so hwere's where I'm at:
Last question I hope - here's what I'm getting for a user generated table
Success: No
Message: HTTP Error: 503
API Response: There is no service defined for vboMCLEActivity
Full Result Structure:
Array
(
[success] =>
[message] => HTTP Error: 503
[response] => There is no service defined for vboMCLEActivity
)
I think I'm close on the code - just looking for a little help with this syntax. vboMCLEActivity is something we craeted and are storing stuff in.
While you can read/write Panel Sources via the API, I don't believe you can write to non-panel-source Business Objects directly using the API. Only read-access. Write access directly to business objects was removed some time ago.
You may need to explain what version of iMIS you are on, and what/how this "vbo" was created or what it is. You mentioned "user generated table", what does that mean? Is it a General Lookup Table? Because you access that via the general lookup table endpoint.
Thanks Lee - I really appreciate that insight! We're on the cloud version of iMIS - I'll see if I can get information about the BOs (that sounds right- I'd imagine they're restrictive due to security concerns) but I'll report back with my findings.
Thanks again for your help!
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