Extensibility with Plugins and APIs
An Open Architecture
By employing an open architecture based on end-to-end 100% JavaScript, AngularJS and plugins, Informer 5 is designed to be highly adaptable, flexible and scalable. Informer makes it easy to integrate with other modern JavaScript libraries and to write, test, share, and deploy plugin code. This architecture offers many benefits to you for data analysis.
For example, you can bring in:
- Unique customizations
- Input forms
- Authentication schemes
- Datasources
- Datasets
- Flow steps
- Mappings
- Visuals
- and other functionality into the system.
Plugins
Plugins enable the system to be safely customized (by customers, system integrator partners, and our own services team) to meet customer requirements without the need for a new software release. These customizations can also be easily shared between users and organizations via Github or the NPM Central Repository.
The possibilities with plugins are really limitless. New functionality or customized features can be easily added to the system to support your data analysis. You can have a plugin that automatically provides links between tables in your Datasource, or a customized formatted output, for example: invoice, or a new visual type, or a new logo or color scheme, etc.
Interacting with APIs
Informer 5 offers a rich, flexible, and easy-to-understand REST API for external programs to interact with. We decided early on in the development process that almost all of the interaction between our UI and our server would be done via this API – thereby ensuring it is robust and usable for customers who want to tightly integrate Informer 5 with their other applications for improved data analysis.
Overview of REST
APIs which use standard http(s) interactions as their method of interaction are referred to as RESTful. You can use a REST client of your choice. Interaction with Informer 5’s API is accomplished by issuing carefully crafted, PUT, POST, GET, and DELETE HTTP commands to specific URLs on the Informer server, and then interpreting the response the server gives. In this way, you can interact directly with Informer 5’s server outside of the UI.
All REST requests are authenticated and authorized by the Informer server. Informer supports three authentication methods:
- Session – Uses a session cookie set after a successful login and carried with each REST request.
- Token – A query parameter attached to a request URL that allows access to a set of routes relevant to accessing the asset for which the token was created.
- Basic – HTTP Basic authentication method where username and password are communicated using the HTTP Authentication Header.
