Birt with restful APIs

Question

I am developing BIRT reports for a PHP project. I can easily develop reports by connecting directly to the database using JDBC Datasource. However certain data come from restful api and I am unable to create a datasource from those api endpoints.

Birt has option to create datasource from web services, however this seems to only accept SOAP APIs. I was wondering if someone can show me how to create birt datasources from REST APIs. I read through all the search results provided by google. Some recommend using POJO Datasource, while some recommend using scripted Datasource which requires knowledge in Java and which is little difficult for a PHP programmer to crack through. Most links redirect to devshare which now points to open text and the content doesnot exist anymore. I tried all the recommendations which are as follows.

Using Webservices Datasource: It requires the location of wsdl file which is not there for a REST API. It comes only with SOAP API. Would be great if there is an alternative to this.

Tried POJO Datasource and Scripted Datasource: But as a PHP developer couldn't get a good result as there is no step by step guide out there to do this.

Because REST is pretty popular today, I was wondering if there is any straight forward way to do this, or if there is anyone who can help with Java or Javascript program for scripted datasource for a PHP head. I have been trying this for the last 15 days and is desperate for some help.

Answer 1

Ended up with scripted datasource.

Create a scripted datasource with open() method as follows:

logger = java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger("birt.report.logger");

importPackage(Packages.java.io);
importPackage(Packages.java.net);

//if you have a parameter
var param= params["industryname"].value;

var inStream = new 
URL("http://yourapi/endpoint/" + param).openStream();
var inStreamReader = new InputStreamReader(inStream);
var bufferedReader = new BufferedReader(inStreamReader);
var line;
var result = "";

while ((line = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null)
result += line;
inStream.close();

var json = JSON.parse(result);
vars["HTMLJSON"] = json;

logger.warning (result);
//logger.warning (json);

Then create a dataset with the following methods:

open()

recNum=0;

fetch()

len = vars["HTMLJSON"].length;

if (recNum >= len)
    return false;

row["name"] = vars["HTMLJSON"][recNum].name;
row["id"] = vars["HTMLJSON"][recNum].id;
row["active"] = vars["HTMLJSON"][recNum].active;

recNum++;

return true;

You may need Apache Commons IO included in your scriptlib folder.