README

A webservice tool to parse Markdown-Extended contents online.

The MDE-Service webservice handles raw or JSON requests and send a JSON content response with significant headers.

The basic usage schema is:

$ curl -i http://localhost/mde-service/www/mde-api.php?source=%2AMarkdown%2A-__extended__%20content

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Last-Modified: Mon, 29 Dec 2014 21:11:01 GMT
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
API-Status: 200 OK
API-Version: 0.1
MDE-Version: 0.1-gamma4
ETag: 8a4d0bef2b45148a6c8df14158704f6c

{
    "source":"*Markdown*-__extended__ content",
    "content":"\n\n<p><em>Markdown<\/em>-<strong>extended<\/strong> content<\/p>\n\n\n",
    "errors":[]
}

This webservice is available online at http://api.aboutmde.org/.

Build the request

You can send HTTP requests using verbs GET, POST or HEAD. The GET and POST requests will have the same results while the HEAD one will only fetch response headers.

Accepted data are:

source : the original single MDE content to parse
sources : a table of original MDE contents to parse
options : a table of options to pass to the MDE parser
format : the format to use for the MDE parsing (default is HTML)
extract : a specific \MarkdownExtended\Content content part to extract and return ; this can be "full" (default), "metadata", "body" or "notes" ; see the note below to learn more about the rendering of a content
source_type : use this to define the type of sources to treat ; default is empty (which means "data_input") and you can set it to "file" to treat any attached file
debug : a boolean value to get some debugging information

If you specify both source and sources data, the single source will be added at the end of the sources table.

You can optionally define some special headers:

Accept: application/json to prepare the response format
Time-Zone: Europe/Paris to use a specific timezone ; the time-zone name must follow the the Olson database and defaults to UTC.

Using the source_type=file option, you can upload one or more files and their contents will be parsed as the sources.

Understand the response

The response is a JSON encoded content with a significant status code header.

The JSON content is built like:

errors : a table of error strings
dump : the serialized interface object (in debug mode only)
source : the received MDE source that has been parsed if it was single
content : the parsed version of the source if it was single
sources : an indexed table of received MDE sources if they were multiple
contents : an indexed table of the parsed versions of the MDE sources if they were multiple ; indexes are the same as for the sources elements.

The response status can be:

200 OK if nothing went wrong
304 Not Modified if the request contains an ETag or a If-Modified-Since header and the response is not modified
400 Bad Request if the request seems malformed
405 Method Not Allowed if the request verb was not allowed (anything else than GET, POST or HEAD)
500 Internal Server Error if an error occurred during the process.

The default rendering of a parsed content is a full aggregation of its elements:

$mde_content->getMetadataToString()
\n
$mde_content->getBody()
\n
$mde_content->getNotesToString()

Using the extract argument, you can choose a single element to return.

When the sources came from one or more uploaded files, the filenames are rendered in the sources array with the same index as in the resulting contents array.

Versions information

Each response of the API will have a API-Version header with the current API version number. You can use it to check that you are still working with the right version.

If a content parsing happens, the response will also have a MDE-Version header with the version number of the MarkdownExtended parser used. This reference should be a release of the package http://github.com/piwi/markdown-extended.

Caching responses

The responses of the API are not cached (this would have no sense). But you can make a request with information to update your content only if the response is modified. You can do so by re-using the ETag header of a previous response you had and send it as a value of a If-None-Match header in your request:

$ curl --header "If-None-Match: YOUR_PREVIOUS_RESPONSE_ETAG" ...

The ETag embedded in each response of the API if an MDE parsing happens is built with the original sources AND their parsed contents. This way, if you use the header above you will have the 304 Not Modified status response only if you sent the same source AND if the result is not updated.

Implementation examples

Command line usage

The examples below can be run in command line using curl. Each of them will fetch the response headers and its content on the terminal. To get only the content ("in-real-life"), delete the -i option.

The options argument is shown empty in each request but is not required.

A basic POST request usage is:

$ curl -i \
    --request POST \
    --data-urlencode "source=My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty \`azerty()\` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty." \
    --data-urlencode "options={}" \
    http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
API-Status: 200 OK
API-Version: 0.1
MDE-Version: 0.1-gamma4
Last-Modified: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:57:32 GMT
ETag: c6989875115e90dc377c460c4801734c

{
    "source":"My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty `azerty()` azerty <http:\/\/google.com\/> azerty.",
    "content":"\n\n<p>My <em>test<\/em> MDE <strong>content<\/strong> ... azerty <code>azerty()<\/code> azerty <a href=\"http:\/\/google.com\/\" title=\"See online http:\/\/google.com\/\">http:\/\/google.com\/<\/a> azerty.<\/p>\n\n\n",
    "errors":[]
}

A basic GET request usage is:

$ curl -i \
    --get \
    --data-urlencode "source=My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty \`azerty()\` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty." \
    --data-urlencode "options={}" \
    http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;
    
# same output ...

A POST request with JSON encoded arguments can be made with:

$ echo "{ \
    \"source\":     \"My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty \`azerty()\` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty.\", \
    \"options\":    \"{}\" \
    }" | curl -i \
        --request POST \
        --header "Content-Type: application/json" \
        --data @- \
        http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;

# same output ...

You can define a personal header in the request with:

$ curl -i \
    --header "Time-Zone: Europe/Paris" \
    --request POST \
    --data-urlencode "source=My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty \`azerty()\` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty." \
    --data-urlencode "options={}" \
    http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;

# same output ...

To upload a file, use:

$ curl -i \
    --form "source=@my-file.md" \
    --form "source_type=file" \
    http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;
    
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
API-Status: 200 OK
API-Version: 0.1
MDE-Version: 0.1-gamma4
Last-Modified: Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:57:32 GMT
ETag: c6989875115e90dc377c460c4801734c

{
    "source":["my-file.md"],
    "content":"\n\n<p>My <em>test<\/em> MDE <strong>content<\/strong> ... azerty <code>azerty()<\/code> azerty <a href=\"http:\/\/google.com\/\" title=\"See online http:\/\/google.com\/\">http:\/\/google.com\/<\/a> azerty.<\/p>\n\n\n",
    "errors":[]
}

In case of error, you will have:

$ curl -i \
    --request INPUT \
    --data-urlencode "source=My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty \`azerty()\` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty." \
    --data-urlencode "options={}" \
    http://api.aboutmde.org/mde-api.php ;

HTTP/1.1 405 Method Not Allowed
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
API-Status: 405 Method Not Allowed
API-Version: 0.1

{
    "sources":[],
    "contents":[],
    "errors":["Request method \"INPUT\" is not allowed!"]
}

JavaScript implementation

Below is a sample of JavaScript usage of the interface via an XMLHttpRequest object:

// open a new XHR request handler
var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest();

// define a response callback
xhr.onreadystatechange  = function() {
    if (xhr.readyState  == 4) {

        // the response is always a JSON content
        var response = JSON.parse(xhr.response);

        // the response can have multiple "status" header:
        // 200 : no error
        if (xhr.status  == 200) {

            // if response.content is not empty
            if (response.content.length > 0) {
                var ajax_response = response.content;

            // else an error occurred
            } else {
                console.error("Error on XHR response:\n" + response.errors.join('\n'));

            }

        // 400 : bad request
        } else if (xhr.status  == 400) {
            console.error('Bad request!' + response.errors.join('\n'));

        // 405 : bad method (this one should never happen here)
        } else if (xhr.status  == 405) {
            console.error('Bad request method!' + response.errors.join('\n'));

        // 500 : any other error
        } else if (xhr.status  == 500) {
            console.error('Internal server error!' + response.errors.join('\n'));

        }
    }
};

// these are just for the example
var opts = {
    source:     'My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty `azerty()` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty.',
    options:    {}
};

// build the request data
var raw_data = "options=" + encodeURIComponent(JSON.stringify(opts.options)) + "&"
    + "source=" + encodeURIComponent(opts.source);

// make the POST request
xhr.open("POST", "mde_editor_interface.php", true);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");
xhr.send(raw_data);

// you can also make a simple GET request with the same data
xhr.open("GET", "mde_editor_interface.php?" + raw_data, true);
xhr.send();

// you can also post a JSON table
xhr.open("POST", "mde_editor_interface.php", true);
xhr.setRequestHeader("Content-Type", "application/json");
xhr.send(JSON.stringify(opts));

PHP implementation

Below is a sample of a PHP usage of the interface via a cURL request:

// these are just for the example
$mde_options    = array();
$mde_source     = 'My *test* MDE **content** ... azerty `azerty()` azerty <http://google.com/> azerty.';

// send a post request
$curl_handler = curl_init();
curl_setopt($curl_handler, CURLOPT_URL, '.../www/mde-api.php');
curl_setopt($curl_handler, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($curl_handler, CURLOPT_POST, true);
curl_setopt($curl_handler, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, array(
                                                   'options'   => json_encode($mde_options),
                                                   'source'    => $mde_source,
                                               ));

$curl_response = curl_exec($curl_handler);

// print the 'content' result if no error
if (!curl_errno($curl_handler)) {
    $curl_response = json_decode($curl_response, true);
    $curl_info = curl_getinfo($curl_handler);
    echo $curl_info['content'];
} else {
    echo 'ERROR : ' . curl_error($curl_handler);
}
curl_close($curl_handler);

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