Can we expose Process/Object as REST API services?

[Tejaskumar_Darji]

Hello everyone,

Is it possible to expose Processes and Objects as REST API services using Blue Prism?

As far as I know currently it uses SOAP, and we are interested in exposing Process/Objects through REST to be consumed by external applications outside of Blue Prism.

If you have any other recommendations or options, kindly share your advice.

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If I was of assistance, please vote for it to be the "Best Answer".

Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaskumardarji/
Technical Lead
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[ewilson]

Hi @Tejaskumar_Darji,

Blue Prim added support for a REST API back in v7.0, but the ability to actually start a specific process wasn't included until v7.1 or v7.1.2 I think. If you're on something earlier than that, there are a couple ways you might be able to address this using the existing SOAP capability.

1) You could put an API gateway (ex. Tyk, Kong, etc) between the client and the BP digital workers. The client would then perform REST requests against the gateway and the gateway would transform those REST requests to SOAP and pass them along to BP. It would then perform the reverse action for responses from BP.

2) A SOAP request is really nothing more than a standard HTTP POST request with a specially formatted body and potentially some specific HTTP headers. There's a tutorial on Postman's site about how to issue a SOAP request as if it were a REST request. You can find it here.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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[Tejaskumar_Darji]

Thanks for the response.

We are on 7.1 so how can we use it as REST? The exposure window under settings looks very similar to V6.

Is there any guide or online documentation available? 

The online docs portal for 7.1 and 7.2 talks about the same WSDL setup that uses SOAP

------------------------------
If I was of assistance, please vote for it to be the "Best Answer".

Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaskumardarji/
Technical Lead
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[ewilson]

@Tejaskumar_Darji,

The BP REST API is a completely different beast from SOAP. You don't expose specific processes/VBOs per se. Instead, you use the API to create a session on a DW and assign the process ID to that session. Then you can issue a start command against the session.

Here's a link to the REST API documentation for BP v7.1.

https://bpdocs.blueprism.com/bp-7-1/en-us/bp-api/api-spec-home.htm

There should also be some training available from Blue Prism U about using the REST API.

Cheers,

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Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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[Tejaskumar_Darji]

Ok yes, this is helpful. Thank you Eric Wilson

------------------------------
If I was of assistance, please vote for it to be the "Best Answer".

Thanks & Regards,
Tejaskumar Darji - https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaskumardarji/
Technical Lead
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