WebSphere Commerce AJAX framework Cont.. Some example for Order Module

With WebSphere Commerce feature pack 4 onward,  we now have three variations of invoking the Order Management URL's. Lets look at each of them and when and how to use them considering the performance.

1. Struts Actions invoking WebSphere Commerce Command.

Invoke the struts Action configured to a Websphere commerce command, either using the HTTP/HTTPS and passing the request parameters using a GET or a POST method.

Ex: OrderItemAdd action invoking the OrderItemAdd command.

        <action

            parameter="com.ibm.commerce.orderitems.commands.OrderItemAddCmd"

            path="/OrderItemAdd" type="com.ibm.commerce.struts.BaseAction">

            <set-property property="https" value="0:1"/>

            <set-property property="authenticate" value="0:0"/>

        </action>

       Request:  https://localhost/....../OrderItemAdd?catEntryId-123&<otherparameters>

Here the request parameters are passed from a browser or a any client as name/value pair and processed directly by the OrderItemAdd command, well of course there can be struts validator framework validating the parameter being passed. 

2. SOI Actions invoking the SOI client and the Commerce Command

Invoke the SOI action configured in struts, which will further invoke the SOI client and then pass it on to the Commerce Command.

Ex: AjaxOrderChangeServiceItemAdd invoking the Component Service

        <action parameter="order.addOrderItem" path="/AjaxOrderChangeServiceItemAdd"                                                type="com.ibm.commerce.struts.AjaxComponentServiceAction">

   <set-property property="authenticate" value="0:0"/>

   <set-property property="https" value="0:1"/>

  </action>

This action if invoked from a browser passing the name-value pair parameters, will convert them to OAGIS message first, then converts back into name-value pair and invokes the OrderItemAddCmd. So there is a additional conversion of name-value pair to OAGIS message and then back to name/value pair, as the OrderItemCmd will only understand this format. 

If invoked from browsers, this could have negative impact on the performance of Order management functionality.

This can be used if the client needs to pass the OAGIS message format into the Websphere Commerce Server.

3. REST services introduced in FEP4.

Invoke the struts action and pass the request as JSON. 

Ex: POST /wcs/resources/store/10101/cart HTTP/1.1

Host: localhost

Content-Type: application/json

{

   "orderItem": [

      {

         "productId": "10541",

         "quantity": "2.0",

         "itemAttributes": [

          {

           "attrName": "10297",

           "attrValue": "4T"

          }

         ]

      },

      {

         "productId": "10823",

         "quantity": "3.0"

      },

      {

         "productId": "10260",

         "quantity": "1.0"

      }

   ]     

}

Here the request is first interpreted by the REST webservice, which converts the JSON string into a Map of name/value pairs and then invokes the SOI service of OrderManagement (section 2 above), then further processing by SOI and the return response is converted back into JSON.

With REST, we now have two more conversions one from JSON to name/value pair, then name/value pair to OAGIS message, then OAGIS to name/value pair.

JSON is very well used format for AJAX requests and for exposing Restful services, but do we need two level of conversion before the request is actually process.