The CAS APIs

There are four APIs in the Content Acquisition System.

These include the following:

CAS Server API — A WSDL based API that modifies and controls crawling operations against a variety of file system, CMS, and custom data sources.
Component Instance Manager API — A WSDL based API that creates, lists, and deletes Record Store instances.
Record Store API — A WSDL based API that modifies and controls a variety of reading, writing, and utility operations against Record Store instances.
CAS Extension API — A Java based API to build extensions to the Content Acquistion System such as data sources and manipulators. This API is for plug-in developers and it is documented in its own guide. For details, see the CAS Extension API Guide.

The rest of this guide documents the WSDL-based APIs. Each WSDL-based API in the Content Acquisition System is language-agnostic. That is, each API can be used with any programming language that has Web services support, and developers can write crawl functions in their preferred language (Java, .NET, etc.) as a Web service.

Name and location of the WSDL files

You can find the following WSDL files under <install path>\CAS\version\doc\wsdl\:

CAS Server API — CasCrawlerService.wsdl.
Component Instance Manager API — ComponentInstanceManager.wsdl.
Record Store API — RecordStore.wsdl.

Java convenience classes

For the sake of convenience, Java versions of each API are included under <install path>\CAS\version\lib :

CAS Server API — cas-api\itl-api-3.0.2.jar.
Component Instance Manager API — component-manager-api\component-manager-api-3.0.2.jar.
Record Store API — recordstore-api\recordstore-api-3.0.2.jar.

Each API also includes utility (helper) classes in its JAR file.

If desired, you can use the Java version of the API rather than generate client stubs from the WSDL files. The Java versions were generated using Apache CXF. For other languages (such as .NET), you must generate the client stubs in your programming language.

Java examples in the guide

Examples in this guide use the Java versions of the APIs mentioned above. This convention of using the Java APIs has an important implication in the code examples:

Most types of identifiers are set in the constuctor rather than in a setter method. For example:

 ModuleId moduleId = new ModuleId("File System");

If you are generating client stubs, most types of identifiers are set using a setter method. For example:

 ModuleId moduleId = new ModuleId();
 moduleId.setId();

The specific setter usage depends on the application you use to generate client stubs. For example, setter usage varies in stubs generate with Apache Axis and Apache CXF.

Javadoc for the CAS APIs

The Javadoc provides online documentation for both the core and utility classes. You can find the Javadoc under \CAS\version\doc\:

CAS Server API Reference — cas-server-javadoc
Component Instance Manager API Reference — component-manager-javadoc
Record Store API Reference — recordstore-javadoc