7 Using MapleNet's Web Service

In this Chapter

• MapleNet Simple Web Service
• Web Services Description Language File
• Methods Available in MapleService

7.1 MapleNet Simple Web Service

MapleService provides a simple web service interface to MapleNet. Users build client applications to utilize the web service. These applications can be built using a variey of tools such as Apache's Axis plugin for Eclipse, Microsoft's C# toolkit, IBM Websphere, Sun's NetBeans IDE, and others.

Note: Building the client application is not part of MapleNet and is beyond the scope of this document.

7.2 Web Services Description Language File

Web services are defined using a file containing the Web Services Description Language (WSDL). Before creating a client to connect to the MapleNet Web Service, download the definition of the MapleService using the WSDL file located at the URL

http://yourserver.com:port/maplenet/services/MapleService?wsdl

where

• yourserver.com is the name or IP address of your MapleNet server.
• port is the http port for the server, usually 80 or 8080.

The above URL can be used in your Web Services toolkit so that it can create the skeleton code to connect to the MapleService web service.

7.3 Methods Available in the MapleService Web Service

There are two methods available in the web service. These methods correspond to the following APIs:

String   result  = evaluate(String expression);
String[] results = callMaple(String[] expressions);

where

• evaluate will accept a single string that is a valid Maple expression and return a string corresponding to Maple's response after evaluating that expression.
• callMaple will accept an array of strings of valid Maple expressions and return an equivalent number of strings corresponding to Maple's response of evaluation each of those expressions.

Note: Once a single call to the web service completes, the Maple kernel is released. This means that state (e.g., variable assignments) are not preserved.

Currently the input strings must represent Maple 1-D expressions. The output will be Maple 1-D expressions.

Results from expressions that generate plots will be output as a Base64 encoded text string in the form

_Base64GIF(w,h,data)

where

• _Base64GIF indicates that the result is an encoded plot.
• w,h are the width and height of the output plot.
• data is the binary plot data representing the GIF bytes of the plot written using a standard "Base 64" encoding. A Base64 decoder must be used to turn the data into binary data that can either be rendered by the client application or written as a GIF file.