Magento API – High-Loaded Service: SOAP vs REST

magento-1.7magento-1.8magento-enterpriserestsoap

I have a task to make an api for Magento using it's SOAP or REST implementation.

I've read a lot about both services, also have experience with them. But not in high-loaded projects.

The task of this service will give some extra information to client via SOAP or REST. I've configured both and everything is ok.

BUT, the questions is what would be better if I have 100 clients calling my service per second, 200, 500 and so on?

I know about SOAP overhead, but also if I use REST I need to use also oAuth, so what will fall down first?

Any experience in that?

Best Answer

You will need to define a clear use-case to get a specific answer to your question. Unless we have a detailled use-case here, I'd like to answer with general advice on that:

SOAP vs REST SOAP and REST are two ways of accessing web-services. SOAP uses XML for its requests. REST relies on HTTP requests via URL and is therefore really lightweight compared to SOAP.

(Dis-)Advantages of SOAP:

well defined web-service
has pre-built standards (SOAPv1, SOAPv2, SOAPv2 WS-I)
works well in enterprise environments (due to standards)
some tools can be automated by using the WSDL
heavyweight compared to REST

(Dis-)Advantages of REST:

easier to use
more flexible
smaller learning curve
effictient/lightweight compared to SOAP
no defined web-service structure (no WSDL)

Magento SOAP API vs REST API

Be aware that not all features are implemented for the REST API.

I created a small performance test-script which does nothing more than 10x10 login and endSession requests via SOAP API v1. No specific action was performed. 1 request took between 0,9 and 1,4 seconds with my local webserver.

To compare with rest: Once your application is authorized (where you need to authorize your application once via clicking "authorize"), it takes only a few miliseconds to be ready to perform your request after you have obtained a token and a secret: 2.0-3.0 * 10^-5 seconds locally.

Performance testing

For conducting a performance test which could finally answer you question, you need to define the requirements.

The following would be interesting:

Do they login once and perform multiple actions or does each of them login for only one action?
What kind of requests do they perform? Adding/updating products, placing orders,... ?
SOAP API v1, SOAP API v2 or SOAP v2 WSI vs REST?

Resources

This might be also interesting for you:

REST vs SOAP performance
Performance Test with product import via SOAP (in German)

Related Solutions

API – Choosing Between SOAP and REST

If this is purely read only data driven, You would be are better off push/polling Magento's API data into some data structure/DB to CDN and possibly cache locally. Scaling becomes a lot easier and your authentication problem isn't an obstacle anymore. But this purely depends on the requirements of the mobile app.

Magento has this authentication for a reason, as it exposes both Customer and Backend facing functionality. Someone could easily sniff out the URLs you are using and have lots of fun if there was no authentication. And for pete's sake use SSL! :)

In the end the purpose of the mobile app is what should be most considered.

To answer your question SOAP vs REST:

http://spf13.com/post/soap-vs-rest

REST is most usually the answer.

Magento 1.9 – Problems Calling Magento SOAP V2 Service in C#

The problem you're experiencing is that .NET/C# is having trouble parsing the content type Magento is sending along with it's response. SOAP is notoriously finicky about receiving just the right stuff in just the right format. Couple that with PHP's rather poor implementation of the protocol and you're in for a lot of fun.

I'm looking at a Magento 1.9 for the following information:

After some digging I found that the header for the SOAP calls are set in app/code/core/Mage/Api/Model/Server/V2/Adapter/Soap.php on line 52.

51. ->clearHeaders()
52. ->setHeader('Content-Type','text/xml; charset='.$apiConfigCharset)
53. ->setBod...

Note that that Content-Type header matches your text/xml; charset=utf-8 desired charset. Adjusting line 52 to:

52. ->setHeader('Content-Type','text/xml; charset='.$apiConfigCharset, true)

tells Magento to force overwriting that header if it's already set.

Make sure to make a copy of the file with it's full path to the app/code/local/Mage/... to avoid overwriting core files. You'll thank me when you want to upgrade Magento at some point.

Also, make sure to look carefully, there's two setHeader() calls in that file.

And finally, there's also a WS-I compliant SOAP adapter available, the same fix applies to that file. You can find it in app/code/core/Mage/Api/Model/Server/Wsi/Adapter/Soap.php.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

API – Choosing Between SOAP and REST

Magento 1.9 – Problems Calling Magento SOAP V2 Service in C#

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