Question

Using REST API submit, how to send email

  • 5 October 2015
  • 9 replies
  • 8 views
A
Hello!

 

 

I'm developing a web application that sends requests to an FME server to run some pre-defined workspaces. 

 

 

I'm passing in some parameters (including geometries as GeoJSON) as published Parameters, and I am using the rest API endpoint /fmerest/v2/transformations/commands/submit/REPOSITORY/WORKSPACE

 

 

This seems to work fine, I get a job ID back and the logs tells me that the job has run. 

 

 

However, and here lies the problem: As these jobs can be long-running and I don't want the hassle of polling FME server from my web app I would like FME server to send the result as an email to an email-address specified when the job is submitted (IE: not hard-coded in FME server)

 

 

 

After some googling and chats with our FME experts it seems like this should be possible using the JobSubmitter service (http://docs.safe.com/fme/2014/html/FME_Server_Documentation/Default.htm#web_services/job_submitter_service.htm) and setting the opt_requesteremail property.

 

 

However: to my understanding the jobsubmitter only works with Query parameters, and not a POST body like in the /fmerest/v2/transformations/commands/submit/REPOSITORY/WORKSPACE endpoint. I want to use a POST body as I'm rather sure that I will have published parameters (GeoJSON polygons f.ex) that exeeds the maximum URL length)

 

 

So: the simple question is: How do I use the fmerest/v2/transformations/commands/submit/REPOSITORY/WORKSPACE endpoint and specify an email to send the result to? 

 

 

I've tried setting NMDirectives.successTopics and NMDirectives.failureTopics to JOBSUBMITTER_ASYNC_JOB_SUCCESS and JOBSUBMITTER_ASYNC_JOB_FAILURE in the PostBody and adding opt_requesteremail and opt_servicemode=async to the URL, but it does not seem to work.

 

 

This seems to me like a rather basic question, and I cannot possibly be the first who wants to do this? Any help appreciated!

 

 

9 replies

david_r
Rank
Userlevel 4
Hi

 

 

You're on the right track, you should probably not use the old job submitter service, but rather the new

 

<server>/transformations/commands/submit/<repository>/<workspace>

 

 

It will allow you to POST your published parameters.

 

 

For the notification, be sure to specify the topics JOBSUBMITTER_ASYNC_JOB_SUCCESS/FAILURE in the wizard when publishing the workspace on FME Server. On the server, create a new subscription that is alerted by these two topics and sends you the necessary signal (mail or other).

 

 

David

 

 
sigtill
Rank
Badge +21
And it works correctly through the Jobsubmitter interface on fmeserver, so the topics are set correctly and the subscription is the standard subscription auto-generated by FME Server
The real SigTill
A
Ah, great to know! This also cleared up something for me: Job submitter is the old way, the REST api Endpoint I'm using is the right one. 

 

 

However, I still cannot get this to work. I'm now sending a POST request to /fmerest/v2/transformations/commands/submit/REPO/WORKSPACE?opt_requesteremail=someone@example.com&opt_servicemode=async&opt_showresult=false

 

 

with the body: 

 

 

 

{ "FMEDirectives": {}, "NMDirectives": { "failureTopics": [ "JOBSUBMITTER_ASYNC_JOB_FAILURE" ], "successTopics": [ "JOBSUBMITTER_ASYNC_JOB_SUCCESS" ] }, "TMDirectives": { "rtc": false, "description": "description", "priority": 5, "tag": "linux" }, "publishedParameters": [ { "name": "geomCoordSys", "value": "EPSG:4326" }, { "name": "geomPoint", "value": "{\\"type\\":\\"Point\\",\\"coordinates\\":[10.677337646484375,59.923194464901037]}" }, { "name": "Buffer", "value": "552" } ], "subsection": "REST_SERVICE", "workspacePath": "\\"Analyseplattform_test/Enkel_geometri_og_buffer/Enkel_geometri_og_buffer.fmw\\"" }

 

 

 

 

However, the email_to parameter I try to set on NMDirectives disappears when I query 

 

/fmerest/v2/transformations/jobs/id/JOBID/request

 

 

This parameter (the email_to) seems to be the only missing parameter now, do you know how I can pass that in using the transformations/commands/submit/REPO/WORKSPACE path?
david_r
Rank
Userlevel 4
Hi

 

 

If you set the topics when publishing the workspace on FME Server, I do not think you need to set the NMDirectives.

 

 

Also, I guess that you've played around with the interactive API documentation at http://docs.safe.com/fme/html/FME_REST/? It's quite helpful in letting you construct sample requests.

 

 

David

 

 
A
Hmm.. This may be due to my lack of understanding of FME-terminology, but to me the main problem seems to be "How to specify the email to send the message to".

 

 

 

As far as I understand things, this should NOT be a Published parameter on the workspace itself, and for the jobsubmitter the email is specified using the opt_requesteremail property. However, I cannot find a way to add this property to the Post Body of a request to teh REST API. I've tried this:

 

 

-  setting it on the URL itself: did not work

 

- adding it to NMDirectives: did not work

 

- adding it to Published parameters list: Threw an error

 

 

So, I'm at a loss here. 
K
Badge
Hi Guys,

 

The transformation/commands api seems to support "NMDirectives" so you can specify the success and failure topics but it doesn't seem to support any other NMDirectives.  So I don't think that can work because you can't pass the email_to address.

 

 

Can you use the Job Submitter Service?  Then this should be possible with POST or GET if you specify the following opt parameters:

 

opt_servicemode=async

 

opt_requesteremail = <emailaddress>

 

 

I'll follow-up in more detail via the support case we have for you.

 

Ken 

 

 
A
Yeah, I found out that adding email_to to the NMDirectives did not work. Strange, is there any logical reason for that?

 

 

As much as I would like to use the REST API I'd rather have a working solution, so after "arguing" a bit with the Job Submitter Service (and after some more thinking, the Data Download Servcie). This works, but I ran into some other trouble (related to passing GeoJSON as a published parameter). I at first has to do some replacing og {, [ , and ", (to <bracketstart> etc etc) But SigTill found another way to define a PublishedParameter Geometry, and this solved the issue.

 

 

So: current status: This is now working using the DataDownload Service, altough I would really like this to work using the REST API as well. Rather difficult to dig around in several disconnected APIs, trying to understand what works and not. 
K
Badge
Yes agreed,

 

We have a longstanding task to include the services in the REST API. The other thing that would help is to allow full messages in the NMDirectives for the existing transformation methods - to be honest this is the first time that particular issue has come up that I know of.

 

Thanks 

 

Ken
A
Great to hear you have it on the drawing board at least! 

 

 

Hmm, maybe my use-case is a bit strange then? I would think it fairly common to be able to start a job using the REST api and have a response sent to a user-defined email. Or do you think this is an uncommon use-case or do people solve it in other ways?

 

 

The most frustrating thing for a developer not knowing FME-jargon is juggeling the concepts of REST-api, Jobsubmitter and DownloadService (and maybe more). I guess there are reasons behind this division, but they are very unclear to me and they do make the whole API more difficult to wrap your head around. 

 

 

Anyways: This seems to be working now, thanks for all suggestions and help from both David and Ken!

 

 

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