SuperMap iServer provides RESTful services existing in the form of resources. Clients can achieve the corresponding functionality through operations on the resource. In SuperMap iServer, there are four methods to achieve the resource operations.
HTTP, short for HyperText Transfer Protocol, is the most widely used network protocol on the Internet. It is a TCP for request and response between client and server. The client launches a request and establish a TCP connection to a specified port of the server. The server monitors the request sent by the client on the port. Once the request is received, the server sends a status-line, such as "HTTP/1.1 200 OK", and a response message, whose entity body may be a requested file, error message, or some other messages, to the client.
In SuperMap iServer, all the business needs can mapped to resource operations. We use GET to obtain the resource, PUT to modify the resource, POST to create child resources, PUT to create the resource when the target resource does not exist, and DELETE to delete the resource. HEAD is also supported. The HEAD method is identical to GET except that the server must not return a message-body in the response. The HEAD method is used to get the metadata of the resource, including whether the resource can be accessed, whether a certain output format is supported, etc.
Follow the links below to get to know how to build a REST request on the client.