Understanding the GFI HelpDesk Rest API and its methods

This topic provides information on understanding the GFI HelpDesk Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface (REST API) and its methods.

With version 4, we have implemented the mechanism 'REST API'.

REST is an architecture style for designing networked applications. The idea is that, rather than using complex mechanisms such as Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA), Remote Procedure Call (RPC), or Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) to connect between machines, simple HTTPHypertext Transfer Protocol - A protocol for exchange of hypertext documents in HTML. is used to make calls between machines.

An API is a software-to-software interface, not a user interface, using which applications talk to each other without any user knowledge or intervention.

The REST API allows to develop applications or to connect and integrate other applications into the helpdesk. Whether we are building a custom plugin, connecting GFI HelpDesk to another app or pulling data from helpdesk into your other internal systems, the API lets us retrieve, add and modify data in the helpdesk. Almost every object in GFI HelpDesk (a ticket, a user, a staff, etc.) can be manipulated using the API.

In our software, the REST API request is simply an HTTP request with the URLUniform Resource Locator is the address of a web page on the world wide web. set to the path of the helpdesk module (such as Base), controller (like User) and parameters containing the payload of the request (that is, API key, salt, and signature). The GFI HelpDesk API is a 'RESTful web API'. The API uses plain XML for receiving and dispatching data.

REST API allows the following actions to perform in helpdesk:

• GET
• PUT
• POST
• DELETE

The API uses all four REST commands (GET, PUT, POST, DELETE). These commands correspond to respective actions inside the helpdesk. Using REST API in helpdesk, the above-mentioned actions can be performed on the following sections:

• Tickets
• TicketAttachment
• TicketCount
• TicketCustomField
• TicketNote
• TicketPost
• TicketPriority
• Department
• Staff
• TicketSearch
• TicketStatus
• TicketTimeTrack
• StaffGroup
• TicketType
• User
• UserGroup
• UserOrganization
• UserSearch
• News
• Troubleshooter