Headers
By including certain parameters as values in request headers, the client can instruct the server to perform some high-level operations while handling a request.
Authorization
When designing a RESTable application, the developer can choose if to require API keys in REST API requests. If API keys are required, the client is expected to include the key in the Authorization header. If "mykey" is a valid API key, a request could look like this:
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GET https://my-server.com/rest
Headers: 'Authorization: apikey mykey'
RESTable also supports basic authentication. This is particularly useful when sending requests from clients that have built-in support for basic authentication. Basic authentication needs the client to input a user name and password. When sending requests to a RESTable API with basic authentication, leave the user name blank and use the api key as password.
Content-Type
The Content-Type header is used to inform the server of what format the data from the data source is encoded in. Tha value should be a MIME type string, for example application/json (JSON) or application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet (Excel). The RESTable application developer can define additional supported input content types.
Accept
The Accept header tells the server to encode the response body in a certain format. By default, responses are JSON-formatted, but this can be changed to Excel by setting the content of the Accept header to application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet. The server will automatically, as per convention, include information in the Content-Disposition header, that the client can use to automatically give the output file an appropriate name. The RESTable application developer can define additional supported output content types.
Example:
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cd /Users/erik/Desktop
curl 'https://my-server.com/rest/employee'
-H 'Authorization: apikey mykey'
-H 'Accept: application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.spreadsheetml.sheet' -O -J
# The -O flag saves the response as a file
# The -J flag uses the data in the Content-Disposition header to name the file
# Output: a new .xlsx file on my desktop called
# "MyResources.Employee_[time_code].xlsx" where [time_code] is substituted with the
# current date and time.