GlobalSearch Postman Collection

Initial Configuration

Download and import postman collection below;

Create a Postman Environment with the following values;

• user - Windows or Square 9 username. If a windows domain user include the domain prefix

• password - Password for the user, should be set to be type "secret"

• domain - the FQDN of the GlobalSearch server, including the HTTP/HTTPS protocol

  • http://localhost

  • https://localhost

Open

Minimum environment variables that have to be configured for use with the collection

Enabling Postman cookie access

The Authentication and Licensing/Get License request will store the returned license token both as a cookie and as a Postman collection variable. The cookies are carried over to other requests made from the same collection and used for authentication. The Get License request is configured to clear out the cookies prior to running so that the returned values are stored correctly. For this to work you have to first enable access to the domain that the requests are going to;

• From any request select the “Cookies” link underneath the Send button in Postman

Open

• Click the “Domains Allowlist” at the bottom of the popup window and add the domain of your GlobalSearch server as appropriate

Getting a License

See Authentication and Licensing/Get License
GET request to /square9api/api/licenses, uses Basic Authentication to pass in user name and password.

The username and password are populated by the Postman Environment ({{user}} and {{password}} variables) currently in use.

Deleting a License

See Authentication and Licensing/Delete License

DEL request to /square9api/api/licenses/{token} will delete (pre GlobalSearch 6.1) or deactivate (GlobalSearch 6.1+) the given license token.

DatabaseIDs

See Database/Get Database List

Each GlobalSearch Database will have a unique database ID, these are static values and will not change under normal circumstances

Example Response Body

The response will be a JSON document with a list of the databases in the GlobalSearch Instance. Each item in the databases list will have an “Id” key/value pair, this represents the Database ID for the Database.

ArchiveIDs

See Archives\Get Archives

Each GlobalSearch Archive will have a static and unique archive ID that is used to identify the Archive.

Example Response Body

The response body will be a JSON array with each object representing one archive. The “ID” key/value pair will be the ArchiveID that is used in other Square9API requests

SecureIDs

SecureIDs are hashes used to uniquely identify a Search or a Document.

Document SecureID

See Document Actions/Get Document Secure ID

You will need to pass in the Database ID, ArchiveID and DocumentID as well as a license token.

Response:

The response if successful will simply be the document’s SecureID.

Search SecureID

See Searching/Get Archive Searches or Searching/Get Archive Search if you know the SearchID already

Generally any request that returns information about a search should include the Search’s SecureID. See below for an example response from Get Archive Search where we are passing in the search id via URL parameter.

Response:

The response will be a JSON document describing information about the Search, included will be the “Hash” key/value pair, this is the Search SecureID.

FieldIDs

See Field Catalog/Fields/Get Fields or Searching/Get Archive Fields

Each GlobalSearch Field will have a unique field ID, you can retrieve this information in a number of ways. If you have access to the GlobalSearch web administration interface you can quickly check the FieldID by clicking on the “Three Dots” option on the field in question.

To retrieve FieldID information from the API you will have to run one of the requests previously mentioned.

Get Fields

This request will return all of the fields on the GlobalSearch Database. The FieldID is represented by the “ID” key/value pair for each entry in the response body.

Example Response Body

At this point, Get Archive Fields is worth mentioning as unlike the Get Fields request it will limit the returned information to be the fields on the archive in question.

Get Archive Fields

Returns a list of fields tied to the Archive passed in via URL

Example Response Body

Uploading and Indexing a Document (in Chunks)

See Postman flow pictured below (while great for visualization of the process there is not a way to export/share flows from Postman at this time.)

Steps:

Get GlobalSearch License

• Request: GET Authentication and Licenses/Get License

  • Uses Basic Authentication using the postman {{user}} and {{password}} variables (pulled from Postman Environment)

Start file upload to server

• Request: POST Chunking Upload/Create Archive Job

  • this will return the unique JobID that you will need to use in later requests

  • The timestamp value here needs to be unique for each job

Upload file chunk

• Request: POST Chunking Upload/Upload File Chunk
  Body:

  • In this example we are assuming that the file is small enough to be reasonably uploaded in one chunk.

  • PDF is base64 encoded, in this case since there is only one chunk the Index value is 1

    • Online Base64 encoding service: https://www.base64encode.org/

    • The Postman collection includes the {{pdfvaluefull}} variable which is a full PDF encoded to base64 that can be used with this request as long as you are doing a one chunk only upload.

Finalize Upload

• Request: GET Chunking Upload/Finalize Upload

  • This will write the completed chunks to a file in the WebPortalCache directory, the return value from this request will be that file name. This file name is used in the last request when indexing the document.

Import Document from WebPortalCache

• Request: POST Document Actions/Import Document from WebPortalCache

Example Body of Request:

• Uses the WebPortalCache filename to index the document to the selected database/archive

Uploading and Indexing a Document

Postman Flow example

Steps:

Get GlobalSearch License

• Request: GET Authentication and Licenses/Get License

• Uses Basic Authentication using the postman {{user}} and {{password}} variables (pulled from Postman Environment)

Upload File to Server

• Request: POST Document Actions/Upload File To Server

• Uses request body form-data to upload files

  • Note that you can add multiple files by adding more “file” keys to the form-data section.

  • Select the request and switch to the Body tab;

Index the document

• Request: POST Document Actions/Import Document from WebPortalCache

Example Body of Request:

Running a search

Postman flow example:

See Searching/Run Search
In order to run a search you will need the following;

• Database ID

  • Run Database/Get Database List and pick the most appropriate database from the returned list

• Archive ID

  • Run Archives/Get Archives, pick the appropriate archive from the returned list

• Search SecureId

  • Run Searching/Get Archive Searches to return a full list of searches for an archive, the "Hash" value in the returned information is the "SecureId" of the search.

• Search Criteria information as needed

  • In the output of Searching/Get Archive Searches, each search will have a "Detail" object, each item is a search prompt, the "ID" value is the prompt id that will be used in the Search Critera

    • Note that the prompt ids will change if the search is modified/edited/updated.

The JSON document below is an excerpt of the information retrieved from the Searching/Get Archive Search request. Note that the “Detail” array will have a list of objects describing each Search Prompt. The “ID” key/value pair is the “Prompt Id”. The “FID” value is the GlobalSearch FieldID that the prompt will be compared against.

Once you have all of this information fill it out in the GlobalSearch Collection variables as desired.

For the "SearchCriteria" URL parameter, this is a JSON document that pairs Prompt IDs (retrieved from search description) with the search criteria.

When passed in via URL param as described the above will execute the search with "tom" as the only filter criteria for search prompt 1. Postman will handle URL escaping, if you are implementing outside of Postman you will have to take steps to ensure that the search values are properly escaped, if they are not you may recieve 404s instead of an error message.

Other Parameters for Searching/Run Search

• Page - Mainly used by GlobalSearch Web/LAN to return a limited number of results in page like fashion

• RecordsPerPage - The number of results to return

• SecureId - The "Hash" of the search

• count - Only returns the number of documents found, without information about the documents themselves

Moving a Document

See Document Actions/Copy Document and Document Actions/Move Document

In order to move a document you will need to know the following

• DatabaseID - GlobalSearch Database ID

  • Run Database/Get Database List and pick the most appropriate database from the returned list

• ArchiveID - GlobalSearch Archive ID

  • Run Archives/Get Archives, pick the appropriate database from the returned list

• DocID - GlobalSearch Document ID

  • There are many ways this is obtained, typically via running a search

• DestinationArchiveID - GlobalSearch Archive ID that you want to move/copy the document to

• SecureID - A unique hash of the document

  • See Document Actions/Get Document Secure ID

Updating Index data on a Document

See Document Actions/Update Index Data

In order to update index data fro a document you will need to know the following, see previous sections for how to obtain these.

• DatabaseID - GlobalSearch Database ID

• ArchiveID - GlobalSearch Archive ID

• DocID - GlobalSearch Document ID

• SecureID - A unique hash of the document

Example Body of Request:

Below is an example of the Request body used for updating index data. The “ID” key value pair refers to the FieldID on the document that you want to update the data for. The “VAL” key/value pair is the value that you want to be updated.