#REST API

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Representational state transfer (REST) is a software architectural style that defines a set of constraints to be used for creating Web services. Web services that conform to the REST architectural style, called RESTful Web services (RWS), provide interoperability between computer systems on the Internet. RESTful Web services allow the requesting systems to access and manipulate textual representations of Web resources by using a uniform and predefined set of stateless operations. Other kinds of Web services, such as SOAP Web services, expose their own arbitrary sets of operations.

Learn More.

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Article David Hockenbroch · May 7 8m read

In our previous article, we explored the basics of unit testing in IRIS and the ways to apply it to a REST API. We even figured out how to test logic before finalizing network configurations and authentication, allowing us to focus solely on testing the API contents. Today, we will build upon that foundation and elevate our unit testing strategy by using another tool: %Populate .

At first glance, the %Populate class appears to be very simple. You can create a class that extends both %Persistent and %Populate and inherit a Populate method designed to generate randomized records.

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Article Yuri Marx · Apr 20 25m read

What is a Microservice?

A microservice is an architectural style that structures an application as a collection of small, autonomous services. Each component is developed around a specific business capability, can be deployed independently, and is typically managed by a miniature, specialized, self-governing team. (Source: https://microservices.io/)

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Article Lorenzo Scalese · Feb 20 6m read

Introduction

The standard %Net.HttpRequest library in InterSystems IRIS is powerful and comprehensive, but it can be verbose for simple operations. Writing an HTTP request often requires several lines of code to instantiate the class, configure the server, the port, HTTPS, add headers, and finally send the request.

When testing in the terminal, this configuration quickly becomes too heavy, and usually ends up with the creation of temporary methods...

FastHTTP

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Article Andrew Sklyarov · Mar 14 6m read

I may have mentioned this before: I believe the Visual Traces, these sequence diagrams with full content of each step, are a fantastic feature of the IRIS Data platform! Detailed information about how the API works internally, as a visual trace, can be very useful for projects on the IRIS platform. Of course, this applies when we are not developing a high-load solution, in which case we simply don't have time for saving/reading messages. For all other cases, welcome to this tutorial!

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Article Oliver Wilms · Feb 25 2m read

iris-budget

I created iris-budget app for the InterSystems Full Stack Contest in 2026. By full stack, we mean a frontend web or mobile application that inserts, updates, or deletes data in InterSystems IRIS via REST API, Native API, ODBC/JDBC, or Embedded Python.

My app uses multiple REST APIs to add a new category or retrieve a list of categories of expenses and income.

First web application /csp/coffee

I inherited /csp/coffee from module.xml in iris-fullstack-template.

Second web application /csp/budget

For this project, I created a swagger file called "budget.json.

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Article Muhammad Waseem · Feb 25 4m read

image

Hi Community,
In this article, I will introduce my application iris-CliniNote .

CliniNote is a full-featured clinical notes application that combines classic CRUD operations with **real-time AI-assisted notes matching** powered by **InterSystems IRIS native vector search**. The standout feature: while a doctor is writing or editing a clinical note, a side panel shows the **top 5 most similar notes** based on the semantic content of the note being written — **excluding the current patient** to avoid trivial matches. This gives clinicians immediate access to "patients like this one" — helping with differential diagnosis, treatment pattern recognition, and rare presentation detection.

Online Demo

https://irisclininote.sandbox.developer.intersystems.com/csp/clininote/login.html

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Article Marco Bahamondes · Jun 24, 2025 3m read

Introduction

InterSystems IRIS allows you to build REST APIs using ObjectScript classes and the %CSP.REST framework. This enables the development of modern services to expose data for web apps, mobile apps, or system integrations.

In this article, you'll learn how to create a basic REST API in InterSystems IRIS, including:

  • A persistent data class
  • A REST class with GET and POST methods
  • A web application to expose the API
  • A full demonstration using Docker

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Article Sanjib Pandey · Feb 20 4m read

Project Overview:

The Clinical Staff Master Data Management (CSMDM) system is a full-stack healthcare integration application built on InterSystems IRIS for Health. It centralizes and standardizes clinical staff metadata into a single authoritative repository, exposed through RESTful CRUD APIs and reusable backend methods.

The platform eliminates fragmented lookup tables and hardcoded mappings that commonly cause errors in HL7 and FHIR integration workflows, ensuring data consistency and interface reliability.

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Article David Hockenbroch · Feb 18 7m read

In the previous article, we examined how we can use the %CSP.Request and %CSP.Response classes to test a REST API without having the API fully set up and accessible across a network with an authentication mechanism. In this article, we will build on that foundation to perform some simple unit testing of one of our REST API methods.

The unit testing framework requires a couple of setup steps before we can use it. First, we have to ensure that the unit testing portion of the management portal is enabled so we can review the results of our tests.

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Article Andrew Sklyarov · Feb 15 7m read

In this article, I aim to demonstrate a couple of methods for easily adding validation to REST APIs on InterSystems IRIS Data Platform. I believe a specification-first approach is an excellent idea for API development. IRIS already has features for generating an implementation stub from a specification and publishing that specification for external developers (use it with iris-web-swagger-ui for the best results). The remaining important thing not yet implemented in the platform is the request validator. Let's fix it!

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Article Evgeny Shvarov · Feb 16 5m read

How I Vibecoded a Backend (and Frontend) on InterSystems IRIS

I wanted to try vibecoding a real backend + frontend setup on InterSystems IRIS, ideally using something realistic rather than a toy example. The goal was simple: take an existing, well-known persistent package in IRIS and quickly build a usable UI and API around it — letting AI handle as much of the boilerplate as possible. Here is the result of the experiments.

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Article David Hockenbroch · Jan 7 7m read

There are numerous excellent tools available for testing your REST APIs, especially when they are live. Postman, various web browser extensions, and even custom ObjectScript written with %Net.HttpRequest objects can get the job done. However, it is often difficult to test just the REST API without inadvertently involving the authentication scheme, the web application configuration, or even network connectivity. Those are a lot of hoops to jump through just to test the code within your dispatch class. The good news is that if we take our time to understand the inner workings of the %CSP.REST class, we will find an alternative option suited for testing only the contents of the dispatch class. We can set up the request and response objects to invoke the methods directly.

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Article Tani Frankel · Dec 24, 2025 2m read

You send an HTTP request and get back an HTTP error but with an HTML error page which you didn't expect... what's happening?... 🤔

Specifically for example, perhaps you tried to READ a FHIR Resource (e.g. /Patient/123) and you get back a 404 error page, even though with other Patient IDs, you get back the Resource payload, so "the page" definitely does exist... why should you be getting a 404 error page? 🙄

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Article José Pereira · Dec 7, 2025 16m read

Project Overview / Introduction

Developing and testing REST APIs in InterSystems IRIS often requires a significant amount of boilerplate code. While ObjectScript provides powerful tools for building APIs, writing consistent and repeatable tests can be time‑consuming. This is where IrisOASTestGen comes in.

IrisOASTestGen is a utility designed to generate the structure of test classes and the supporting utility code directly from an OpenAPI 2.0 specification

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Article José Pereira · Dec 9, 2025 11m read

The previous article introduced IrisOASTestGen, a tool designed to generate REST API test code for InterSystems IRIS based on OpenAPI 2.0 specifications. It demonstrated how to scaffold test cases using the default templates bundled with OpenAPI Generator.

This follow-up focuses on the next natural step: customizing the generated test code. By extending the code generation logic with Mustache templates, it becomes possible to express richer semantics, implement CRUD-aware tests, and create more meaningful test suites.

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Article Ashok Kumar Thangavel · Nov 10, 2025 2m read

FastJsonSchema: High-Performance JSON Validation in IRIS

Validating JSON data against JSON Schema is a common requirement for modern applications. FastJsonSchema brings this capability natively to InterSystems IRIS, combining speed, simplicity, and full schema compliance.

Unlike traditional validation approaches, FastJsonSchema generates native ObjectScript code from your JSON Schemas and compiles it directly to iris object code, enabling idiomatic performance without relying on external libraries or runtimes.

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Article Laurel James (GJS) · Dec 4, 2025 2m read

Welcome to the monthly recap of updates and releases to VS Code and InterSystems-related extensions that are relevant to IRIS developers. 

We'll break down the updates that are relevant to InterSystems developers with tips on how they can be applied to your day-to-day projects. 

Don't forget, if you're migrating from InterSystems Studio to VS Code, or want to deepen your knowledge, check out the VS Code training courses from George James Software: georgejames.com/vscode-training

VS Code version 1.106

Unified AI-agent dashboard - 1.

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Article Vachan C Rannore · Nov 21, 2025 3m read

Hola amigo! 😊 Cómo estás hoy,

I would like to share a small part of my learnings from my first ever official project: POS/EDC machine integration with our billing system. This was an exciting challenge where I got hands-on experience working with APIs and vendors. 

How does a Payment Machine actually work?

It's simple, start by initiating/creating a transaction, then retrieve its payment status.

Here, initiate/create refers to POST methodand Retrieve refers to GET.

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Article Zion Amsalem · Nov 9, 2025 3m read

As a developer who uses Cache as DB for a couple of projects, I'm using REST API's every time, knowing how to consume a resource from REST API, in my opinion, it's crucial to know how to consume external REST Api's using %Net.HttpRequest because it enables integration with modern web applications and services, and it's a crucial skill for a backend developer who loves and uses Cache as a DB.

What and who is %Net.

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Article Luis Angel Pérez Ramos · Oct 31, 2025 5m read

Yes, yes! Welcome! You haven't made a mistake, you are in your beloved InterSystems Developer Community in Spanish.

You may be wondering what the title of this article is about, well it's very simple, today we are gathered here to honor the Inquisitor and praise the great work he performed. 

Comunidad de Steam :: :: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition

So, who or what is the Inquisitor?

Perfect, now that I have your attention, it's time to explain what the Inquisitor is. The Inquisitor is a solution developed with InterSystems technology to subject public contracts published daily on the platform  https://contrataciondelestado.es/ to scrutiny.

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Article Kate Lau · Oct 13, 2025 13m read

Hi all,

Let's do some more work about the testing data generation and export the result by REST API.😁

Here, I would like to reuse the datagen.restservice class which built in the pervious article Writing a REST api service for exporting the generated patient data in .csv

This time, we are planning to generate a FHIR bundle include multiple resources for testing the FHIR repository.

Here is some reference for you, if you want to know mare about FHIR The Concept of FHIR: A Healthcare Data Standard Designed for the Future

OK... Let's start😆

1. Create a new utility class datagen.utli.

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Article Kurro Lopez · Oct 23, 2025 1m read

Hi all,

This is a quick tip about how to use case insensitive URL in REST API.

If you have a class that extends from %CSP.REST and Ens.BusinessService, to create a REST API service, and you have defined your WebApplication in lowercase

XData UrlMap [ XMLNamespace = "http://www.intersystems.com/urlmap" ]
{
<Routes>
    <Route Url="/user" Method="POST" Call="User"/>
    <Route Url="/login" Method="POST" Call="Login"/>
</Routes>
}

Only accepts the url in lowercase, i.e. http://myserver/myproduction/user

If you have any uppercase character, the url doesn't work.

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Article Kate Lau · Oct 13, 2025 5m read

Hi all,

It's me again 😁. In the pervious article Writing a REST api service for exporting the generated FHIR bundle in JSON, we actually generated a resource DocumentReference, with the content data encoded in Base64

Question!! Is it possible to write a REST service for decoding it? Because I am very curious what is the message data talking about🤔🤔🤔

OK, Let's start!

1. Create a new utility class datagen.utli.decodefhirjson.cls for decoding the data inside the DocumentReference
 

ClassExtends%RegisteredObject

2. Write a Python function decodebase64docref to 
a. loop through the FHIR bundle
b.

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Article Kate Lau · Oct 9, 2025 6m read

Hi,

It's me again😁, recently I am working on generating some fake patient data for testing purpose with the help of Chat-GPT by using Python. And, at the same time I would like to share my learning curve.😑

1st of all for building a custom REST api service is easy by extending the %CSP.REST

Creating a REST Service Manually

Let's Start !😂

1. Create a class datagen.restservice which extends  %CSP.REST

ClassExtends%CSP.REST

2. Add a function genpatientcsv()

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Article Andrew Sklyarov · Oct 3, 2025 8m read

I was really surprised that such a flexible integration platform with a rich toolset specifically for app connections has no out-of-the-box Enterprise Service Bus solution. Like Apache ServiceMix, Mule ESB, SAP PI/PO, etc, what’s the reason? What do you think? Has this pattern lost its relevance completely nowadays? And everybody moved to message brokers, maybe?

Wiki time: An enterprise service bus (ESB) implements a communication system between mutually interacting software applications in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) .

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Article Ashok Kumar Thangavel · Sep 8, 2025 19m read

FHIR Server

A FHIR Server is a software application that implements the FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) standard, enabling healthcare systems to store, access, exchange, and manage healthcare data in a standardized manner.

Intersystems IRIS can store and retrieve the following FHIR resources:

  • Resource Repository – IRIS Native FHIR server can effortlessly store the FHIR bundles/resources directly in the FHIR repository.
  • FHIR Facade - the FHIR facade layer is a software architecture pattern used to expose a FHIR-compliant API on top of an existing one (often non-FHIR). It also streamlines the healthcare data system, including an electronic health record (EHR), legacy database, or HL7 v2 message store, without requiring the migration of all data into a FHIR-native system.

What is FHIR?

Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) is a standardized framework created by HL7 International to facilitate the exchange of healthcare data in a flexible, developer-friendly, and modern way. It leverages contemporary web technologies to ensure seamless integration and communication across various healthcare systems.

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Article Raef Youssef · Jul 15, 2025 6m read

REST API (Representational State Transfer Application Programming Interface) is a standardized way for web applications to communicate with each other using HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, etc. It's designed around resources, which can be anything from a user to a file. Each resource is identified by a unique URL, and interactions with these resources are stateless, meaning each request from a client to a server must contain all the information needed to understand and process the request.

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Article David Hockenbroch · Jul 10, 2025 16m read

Dear community, I have a confession to make. I have not gotten over Zen yet. Alas, all good things must come to an EOF, so I am currently learning about Angular. I am working on proving to myself that with the right back end and Angular components, I can deliver to myself and my team a very Zen-like experience in this environment. Since this is my first attempt, here is a fair warning: I will be providing some rather large code samples before discussing them. Please warm up your mouse and hand for extensive upcoming scrolling!

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