Product Catalog: Using Web Services to remotely interact with our Catalog

If you are building an online store or just need a place to record your inventory, then chances are you will need a Product Catalog. Now you could go out and buy any old cookie-cutter Catalog tool on the market. However, before you do, you better make sure you understand what your Catalog requires. Otherwise, you may spend a lot of time and money on a tool that will not fit the bill. So, today we will focus on creating a Web Services application that our external tools and applications can use to manipulate our Product Catalog.

Using Web Services to remotely interact with our Catalog

Today’s lesson is going to pick up where we left off with our product catalog applications. In this lesson, we are going to build a Web Service application in Java using the Spring framework. By using the Spring framework and Spring STS Eclipse environment you will be able to quickly and easily build a web service application without having to manage a lot of boilerplate code. This process enables anyone to quickly build a web service application with just the minimal knowledge of how they work.

By the time we are done, you will have a web service application that will include all of the basic CRUD functionalities along with some additional search services. They can be incorporated into all of the previous web examples that we have talked about.

This series comes from our mentoring/mastermind classes. These classes are virtual meetings that focus on how to improve our technical skills and build our businesses. The goals of each member vary, but this diversity makes for great discussions and ton of educational value every time we meet. We hope you enjoy this series as much as we enjoy creating it.