Hi, Community!

Want to try using Flask to expose InterSystems IRIS data over HTTP? This short video will get you started:

Building a REST API in Flask with InterSystems IRIS

👨‍💻Try it yourself in this hands-on exercise! (exercise, 30m).

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

Hi developers!

Observing the avalanche of AI-driven and vibe-coding developer tools that have been appearing lately almost every month with more and more exciting dev features, I was puzzled whether it is possible to leverage it with InterSystems IRIS. At least to build a frontend. And the answer - yes! At least with the approach I followed.

Here is my recipe to prompt the UI vs InterSystems IRIS Backend:

1. Have the REST API on the IRIS side, which reflects some Open API (swagger) spec.
2. Generate the UI with any vibe-coding tool (e.g., Lovable) and point the UI to the REST API endpoint.
3. Profit!

Here is the result of my own exercise - a 100% prompted UI vs IRIS REST API that allows to list, create, update delete entries of a persistent class (Open Exchange,frontend source, video):

What is the recipe in detail?

Hi developers. Just want to share with you a finding that might save you a few important minutes of your developer life with InterSystems IRIS.

But!

It should work; you deployed the REST API correctly, and everything is just in place.

What can go wrong?

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 was designed to address this need. This utility class provides a fluent and concise interface to perform HTTP calls in a single line, while automatically handling the underlying complexity (SSL/TLS, URL parsing, JSON encoding, headers, etc.).

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.

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.

I want to implement isc-rest in my new project iris-budget/module.xml at master · oliverwilms/iris-budget

I get this error:

#8 11.30 Building dependency graph...
#8 12.69 ERROR! Could not find satisfactory version of isc.rest in any repositories. Required by: iris-budget 0.0.1: ^2.0.0
#8 ERROR: process "/bin/sh -c iris start IRIS && \tiris session IRIS < iris.script &&     ([ $TESTS -eq 0 ] || iris session iris -U $NAMESPACE \"##class(%ZPM.PackageManager).Shell(\\\"test $MODULE -v -only\\\",1,1)\") &&     iris stop IRIS quietly" did not complete successfully: exit code: 1
 

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!

Hey everyone,

I'm just seeking some guidance and confirmation on what I'm doing for my production health monitoring.

We utilize Grafana to have reporting/monitoring dashboards and I have made a REST API to query the health of our productions. I believe I have everything figured out except for one thing that I'm uncertain about and that is the Production Item Color indicators:

Is there an easy way of being able to figure out the status of an item with the legend above? Ideally, I'd like to have this data in my JSON response.

I have always struggled with Iterating through a JSON response to pull out certain fields into a Data Class Structure to use to populate fields in a DTL. So I defined the whole structure for the following JSON, with the base structure extending Ens.Response, %XML.Adaptor, and %JSON.Adaptor.

In my previous HttpRequests, I have used Content-Type = application/json but I have a vendor that is requesting we send application/x-www-form-urlencoded. How would I go about formatting the Payload as x-www-form-urlencoded?

Thanks

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.

A question that quickly arises when configuring IAM (aka Kong Gateway) is how many routes should be created to reach all the business objects in an IRIS API.

A common mistake is to create one route per business object, unnecessarily multiplying the number of routes.

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.

What is JWT?

JWT (JSON Web Token) is an open standard (RFC 7519) that offers a lightweight, compact, and self-contained method for securely transmitting information between two parties. It is commonly used in web applications for authentication, authorization, and information exchange.

A JWT is typically composed of three parts:

1. JOSE (JSON Object Signing and Encryption) Header
2. Payload
3. Signature

These parts are encoded in Base64Url format and concatenated with dots (.) separating them.

Defining my first REST API within InterSystems using iris-rest-Api-template as a basis and I am seeing if someone could provide me some guidance to see if I can make it work.  

In some of my other posts, I have been trying to come up with a way for our Enterprise Application Development team which works with .Net to build Applications to make a REST call to our instance of InterSystems to query some of the Cache Tables we have defined. 

Using the iris-rest-api-template, I have created the osuwmc.DataLookup.REST.Base.cls

Class osuwmc.DataLookup.REST.Base Extends %CSP.

There is a Master Table within IRIS that I am populating from Epic but want to share it with our Enterprise Application Development Team (Web). As a test I was able to use _SYSTEM from postman to execute the following.

POST /api/atelier/v1/xxxx/action/query HTTP/1.1
Host: xxxxxxxx
Content-Type: application/json
Authorization: ••••••
Cookie: CSPSESSIONID-SP-443-UP-api-atelier-=00f0000000000AKyLjBfUvU$MpFD8UT8y$EoNKNw1ixZeXN4_Q; CSPWSERVERID=hzZAT5rb
Content-Length: 86

{"query": "SELECT * FROM osuwmc_Epic_Clarity.

I'm a huge sci-fi fan, but while I'm fully onboard the Star Wars train (apologies to my fellow Trekkies!), but I've always appreciated the classic episodes of Star Trek from my childhood. The diverse crew of the USS Enterprise, each masterminding their unique roles, is a perfect metaphor for understanding AI agents and their power in projects like Facilis. So, let's embark on an intergalactic mission, leveraging AI as our ship's crew and  boldly go where no man has gone before!

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? 🙄

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.

Monitoring your IRIS deployment is crucial. With the deprecation of System Alert and Monitoring (SAM), a modern, scalable solution is necessary for real-time insights, early issue detection, and operational efficiency. This guide covers setting up Prometheus and Grafana in Kubernetes to monitor InterSystems IRIS effectively. 

This guide assumes you already have an IRIS cluster deployed using the InterSystems Kubernetes Operator (IKO), which simplifies deployment, integration and mangement.

Why Prometheus and Grafana?

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.

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.

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.

Hello Community,

Great news for developers who have just started working with InterSystems IRIS! We have hands‑on interactive tutorials available via the Instruqt platform! These are perfect for getting up to speed quickly, playing in real environments, and building confidence with IRIS‑based development.

Here is the list of available tutorials:

• Full Stack Tutorial - Experience how IRIS supports full-stack system architecture. 
• InterSystems Interoperability - Explore IRIS interoperability tools for connecting and integrating systems. 
• IRIS for Health Interoperability - Learn to use IRIS for Health features in application integration with data from an EHR (Electronic Health Record). 
• REST + Angular Application - Practice building applications with IRIS REST services. 
• RAG using IRIS Vector Search - Discover IRIS Vector Search capabilities for AI-powered applications. 

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 method and Retrieve refers to GET.