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Simple HTTP Request Consumer - Traditional IBM Lotus Notes Domino

10/18/2010 12:13 AM by Chris Toohey

The ability to consume an HTTP Request is a building block for not only HTTP-accessible applications but is critical in 3rd-party integration.

It is also so ridiculously simple that there's absolutely no excuse: it should be used in every one of your IBM Lotus Notes Domino Web Applications.

Recently, I worked on a solution which consisted of my app communicating with a 3rd-party service. That service would report it's success/fail response via HTTP Request to a submitted URL (via the 3rd-party service API). Simply put, I was able to tell service to send a confirmation via HTTP Request to a specific URL.

That URL, since I was using Traditional IBM Lotus Notes Domino Design Elements, pointed to an Agent Design Element.

Since the HTTP Request could contain any information - from successful processing to failed job status to miscellaneous chatter, I wanted to make it as flexible (as well as future-proofed) as possible.

My response.http Agent looked something like this:


%REM

    Agent request.http

    Created Oct 18, 2010 by Chris Toohey

    Description: Comments for Agent

%END REM

Option Public

Option Declare



Sub Initialize()

    

    Dim s As New NotesSession

    Dim doc As 
NotesDocument

    

    Set doc = s.Currentdatabase.Createdocument()

    Call s.Documentcontext.Copyallitems(doc)

    Call doc.Replaceitemvalue("form", "response")

    Call doc.Save(True, False, False)   

    

End Sub

Pretty simple, huh? I just - literally - consume the HTTP Request via the NotesSession DocumentContext and create a new NotesDocument in the current NotesDatabase.

This technique gives you limitless application -- any communication with the request.http Agent Design Element will result in a response NotesDocument.

This is, of course, using Traditional IBM Lotus Notes Domino Design Elements. My follow-up post will show you how you can achieve the same functionality in an XPages-world!

About the author: Chris Toohey

Thought Leadership, Web & Mobile Application Development, Solutions Integration, Technical Writing & Mentoring

A published developer and webmaster of dominoGuru.com, Chris Toohey specializes in platform application development, solutions integration, and evangelism of platform capabilities and best practices.