Managing WADLs

WADL is one of many asset models supported by the WSO2 Governance Registry. Read more on Supported APIs & Standards for a complete list of asset models supported by WSO2 Governance Registry.

This section shows how to govern WADLs using WSO2 Governance Registry. Web Application Description Language (WADL) is an XML, which describes HTTP-based web applications. One of the most popular usecases of WADL is describing REST (Representational state transfer) Web Services. WADL has the ability to represent model resources provided by the service and relationships between them. For more information, refer to WADL specification (http://www.w3.org/Submission/wadl).

You can upload WADL files from their local file systems as a Governance Archive (See Creating a Governance Archive) or import from a given URL. Uploading as a Governance Archive or importing HTTP is particularly useful if you wish to import WADLs with schemas.

Adding a WADL

Follow the instructions below to add a new WADL to the Governance Registry.

Log on to the Governance Registry Management Console.
Click the Main button to access the Metadata menu. From the left navigation menu, select WADL found under Add, in the Metadata menu.
Select whether to import WADL from URL or upload it from a file. If importing from URL was selected, specify the URL of the WADL and its name.

If uploading from file was selected, you can upload a single WADL file or a ZIP file (in .zip or .gar extension) containing set of WADL/Schema files. See Creating a Governance Archive. Use the Browse button to upload a file.
Click on the Add button.

To update an existing WADL, either delete and add it again or use the Resource Browser.

List WADLs

All the added WSDLs can be viewed under List WSDLs. To do this click on the Metadata > List > WADL as shown in following figure.
Clicking on the above link redirects you to list of WADLs as shown below.

When filtering the data using more than one value in the search field, use comma separated values with quotation marks to distinguish the values. E.g., if there are two entries with the words Connector and Resource, the search string would be: "Connector", "Resource".
As you can see in the above figure, you can filter WADL by its name. Also there is an option where you can search WADLs by its Lifecycle or Lifecycle state as shown in the figure below.

Click any WADL from the list to view it.

When you attempt to view a WADL, you get a detailed view of the WADL, which has different sections/portals for different purposes. These sections/portals are described as follows:

Section	Description
Content	Content has two different views: Custom View: Where a tree structure displays how the resources are organized in the WADL file. See the figure below. Standard View: You can use this to view the full WADL file, edit it or download. See the figure below.
Metadata	In this section you find the metadata of the WADL file as described below. Created : Created time and author Last updated: Last updated time and author Media Type: Mediatype which is used to identify as a WADL which is always application/wadl+xml for WADLs. Checkpoints: Used to create a new version of WADL. Versions: Used to view the existing versions of the WADL. Description: Description of the WADL. For more general details on metadata, click here.
Properties	You can use this to keep WADL related properties. For more general details on properties, click here.
Associations and Dependencies	Associations and Dependencies list down the relationships of WADL with other artifacts in G-Reg. When uploading/importing a WADL to G-Reg, it automatically downloads the schema files used in WADL and adds them to G-Reg and sets them as dependencies of the WADL file. Also G-Reg creates a service for the WADL where the WADL is used by that service. See how the Associations and Dependencies are automatically generated in the following figure. Here listing3.xsd is a dependency of Sample3.wadl and it is used by the sample3 service as its dependency. For more general details of associations and dependencies, click here.
Lifecycle	WADL can associate a lifecycle using the lifecycle portal. You can associate any lifecycle which is currently in the G-Reg using this portal. For more details on adding a lifecycle to G-Reg, click here. For more details on associating lifecycles, click here.
Community features	A WADL can have Comments and Ratings where users can comment on a WADL or rate a WADL. You can add comments and rate using the Comments and Ratings portals. In Ratings it shows My Rating which is the current user rating for the WADL and Rating which is the average rating for the WADL. For more details on comments and ratings, click here.
Retention	Retention is used to restrict users from reading and/or writing to a certain WADL. You can add a retention as shown in the figure below. For more details on retention, click here.
Subscription	Subscriptions are used to subscribe to different WADL events for notification. The following figure shows how to subscribe to different events: There are several events you can subscribe a WADL for. -- Check LC Item -- Uncheck LC Item -- Delete -- Create LC -- Delete LC -- Change LC state -- Update Also there are several notification types G-Reg supports. -- E-Mail -- REST -- SOAP -- User Profile -- Role Profile -- Management Console -- JMX For more details on subscriptions, click here.
Tags and Tag Search	You can link WADLs with different tags and subsequently search for WADLs according to their tags. The following figure shows how to add a tag and how to use the tag search portal to search for WADLs. For more details on tags and tag search, click here.
Permissions	Permissions are used to set the authority of different roles to read/write or delete WADLs. You set the permissions to different roles using the permission section as shown in the figure. For more details on adding users and roles, click here. For more details on managing permissions, click here.