Re: [EXTERNAL] Re: Consuming RESTful APIs from RPG/COBOL ILE

Thanks Buck. That, in combination with our Node.js scripts, might work. Adding it to the list.

Thanks,

Kelly Cookson
Senior Software Engineer II
Dot Foods, Inc.
217-773-4486 ext. 12676
www.dotfoods.com<http://www.dotfoods.com/>

From: WEB400 <web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Buck Calabro
Sent: Friday, July 12, 2019 10:30 AM
To: web400@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: [WEB400] Consuming RESTful APIs from RPG/COBOL ILE

On 7/12/2019 3:02 AM, Kelly Cookson wrote:

We know how to use Node.js to *expose* RESTful APIs on the IBM i. However, if we want to consume an API from a COBOL or CL program, we only know of one way to call a Node.js script: use a QShell command. The QShell command does not appear to have a way to return data from the Node.js script. We can’t get the data from the API we want to consume. We thought about having the Node.js script consume the API and write the data into a database file or data queue, which would then be available for processing by the COBOL or CL program. But…ugh! It just seems like a clunky workaround.

It is clunky. There is no CALL/PARM interface between RPG/Cobol/CL and
the PASE open source languages. That said, Scott Klement has a utility
called UNIXCMD that makes these cross-PASE interactions much easier.
Basically, it uses standard pipes to connect the two end points. It's up
to both sides to format/understand the text passed down the pipes.

--
--buck

http://wiki.midrange.com<http://wiki.midrange.com>
Your updates make it better!