Web services provide a standard way of exposing objects and methods over the Internet. REST is a Web services architectural style that accomplishes this simply and effectively by leveraging the same technology that makes the Web browser such a useful tool.
REST services provides a simple, standards-based, and platform-independent Web interface to services hosted by Esri Business Analyst. This offers businesses, organizations, and agencies the opportunity to leverage Business Analyst's valuable data and powerful analyses in their own network-accessible applications. All endpoints exposed by REST services are accessible through a set of endpoints for each published service.
Analysis/Report Services, Standard Geography Services and Utility Services may be executed through the use of HTTP requests. Client HTTP requests, at its most fundamental level, involve constructing and submitting Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) requests through a Web browser, command line, or some other client application/system.
When accessing a REST API, a typical starting point is called a well-known endpoint. In the case of REST services, they consist of the following base URLs:
| Authentication Endpoint | https://baoapi.esri.com/rest/authentication |
|---|---|
| Report Endpoint | http://baoapi.esri.com/rest/report/<service> |
A short-lived token can be securely requested with the use of the Authentication service. See Security/Authentication Services for more information.
After obtaining a valid token, Web services requests may be submitted through REST services. These services use the signature of the Report Endpoint given above. See the catalog of these services in the Table of Contents to the left.
REST services are stateless, which means that a RESTful architectural style does not keep track of transactions from one request to the next. Each request must contain all prerequisite information for successful execution including a valid and unexpired token.
REST services allow a user to quickly and simply get up and running. Through the use of the Getting Started walk through and the examples provided in the documentation for each service endpoint, a user will be able to submit requests for powerful analysis and valuable data surprisingly quickly.
REST services employ token-based authentication scheme to secure and validate REST requests. A simple understanding of this security model is necessary to submit REST requests. See Security/Authentication Services for more information.
REST services support different response formats for server output to the calling client or browser application. The response format is specified by including the query parameter f and a valid option in a REST services URI request. The list of supported formats for most services includes HTML (HyperText Markup Language), JSON (JavaScript Object Notation), PJSON ("prettified" JSON for readability), and XML (Extensible Markup Language). This variety of output formats can aid in the construction of state-of-the-art Rich Internet Applications, cross-platform and cross-application solutions, and applications which can be integrated with existing systems and data. Please refer to the individual documentation pages under Analysis/Report Services, Standard Geography Services , and Utility Services for the response formats available for each service. For more details, see Output Formats and the documentation for the individual Analysis and Utility services.
With the goals of interoperability, and system and platform independence, REST services request URIs and responses are described with text-based data types and structures. Many of these structures are in widely-supported Web services data formats including XML and JSON. They can be easily assembled or parsed and manipulated in client applications and systems. In order to gain a working understanding of the syntax and structure of these types, REST services documentation explicitly describes their usage and syntax through detailed descriptions and examples. Type syntax and examples are provided in the REST services Data Types section, the ArcGIS Server Geometry Objects section, and in the individual documentation associated with each Analysis service or Utility service. See Data Types for more information.
This Resource Center is provided to give a comprehensive overview of Esri Business Analyst; its related solutions and development at Esri. It is intended to be a central repository of various documentation, presentations, demos and many other resources. We would like to encourage you to leverage the Resource Center and the APIs landing page to view and submit code examples; post and respond to questions; share experiences; find out about updates; and learn more about the data and services that we provide.