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This guide introduces the REST API functionality delivered by the Storefront Gateway identity management service. Storefront Gateway provides a library of REST APIs that client applications (i.e., JavaScript UIs) execute to perform user lifecycle management functions against Storefront Gateway data entities within the cloud. Our library enables your organization’s client developers to quickly build identity services and security into your UIs, all while that data and functionality are managed, as a service, within the MarketONE data store.

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Storefront Gateway API Features

The Storefront Gateway API library is designed for a variety of user-centric capabilities, including:
  • User provisioning and user management; for example, user onboarding, authentication, authorization
  • Service modeling; that is, mapping external account data to Storefront Gateway Account/Subscription/Feature (A/S/F) data entities
  • Service sharing; that is, by way of Storefront Gateway User-to-A/S/F, Group-to-A/S/F, and User-to-Group data associations
  • Service support; for example, retrieve and manage user information in CRM systems
  • High volume machine-to-machine data synchronization between Storefront Gateway and authorized external systems
  • Service entitlement and secure access to resources in business-to-customer contexts; for example, authenticate a user, and retrieve their service entitlements, before granting them access to a service
  • Initialize Storefront Gateway Processes to perform more complex, multiple-call operations that guide front end UIs

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Who Is Storefront Gateway For?

Storefront Gateway is designed for both small and large-scale businesses seeking to simplify and streamline user identity management. This solution is suitable for organizations looking to implement or enhance their digital transformation strategies with minimal infrastructural changes, leveraging REST APIs for a variety of identity and user information management purposes.

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About This Guide

This guide is one half of a broader set of programming documentation for UI developers looking to leverage Storefront Gateway’s identity management capabilities in their client applications. If you’re new to Storefront Gateway and or RESTful API, then use this guide to familiarize yourself with the basics of how REST works in Storefront Gateway. Then, when you’re ready, check out the Storefront Gateway API Process Guide for detailed information on how our patented Storefront Gateway Processes enable your applications to deliver streamlined, adaptive user journeys.

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REST and JSON

Representational State Transfer (REST) is an architectural style built on HTTP standards, and designed around clean, lightweight exchange of data between client and server. RESTful APIs do not return any sort of markup or styling (HTML or CSS). Instead, they return serialized data that a client application consumes, parses, and displays in whatever manner that it requires. Developers can integrate Storefront Gateway REST APIs across a variety of devices and mediums – from browser-based web UIs and mobile apps, to set-top boxes and smartwatches. Storefront Gateway APIs consume and deliver resources using valid JavaScript Object Notation (JSON). JSON provides a clean, human-readable format for data while remaining lean and concise (unlike alternatives such as XML, which can be exceptionally verbose, more difficult to consume, and require more bandwidth per request to exchange data). Because of JSON’s widespread adoption for RESTful APIs, developers often have access to high-quality and high-performance libraries to assist in the serialization and deserialization of data in JSON format across a wide variety of languages, if the library used for web requests does not natively support JSON already. The implementations using Storefront Gateway APIs are compliant with HTTP specifications, and clients need produce the appropriate headers with each request, namely the Content-type header that indicates the media type for requests containing serialized data. The value provided with the header must be application/json (the standard media type for data serialized in JSON format), except in cases where a protocol dictates otherwise. Clients must also produce valid JSON on every request. Storefront Gateway returns errors when required headers are missing, or when the data provided is not in a valid JSON format.

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Building Your Applications With REST API and API-Based Processes

Out of the box, Storefront Gateway provides a library of API endpoints that can be grouped into two major types:
  • An extensive set of “one shot” API that allows you (or your end users) to perform basic CRUD operations (Create/Read/Update/Delete) on Storefront Gateway data resources. For example, once a user signs in to a service, your application will probably call the GET /user API endpoint to retrieve their data and give them a personalized view of the application.
  • A library of process-specific API endpoints that initializes, continues, and completes Storefront Gateway Processes. A Process is flow of linked API requests that fulfills standard user lifecycle use cases, that enables UI developers to easily build and deliver identity management capabilities (onboarding, authentication, password management, social login, etc.) to their end users.
In other words, Storefront Gateway Processes are distinct from, but work in concert with, standard REST API calls. As a UI Developer, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with the concepts of REST (Representational State Transfer), the Storefront Gateway data model, and how each Storefront Gateway Process works. You’ll then want to build your client application(s) with our multi-step Processes, as well as our standard single-call REST APIs, as needed and according to your desired use cases.