RESTFul Configuration API Use Cases

This page enumerates some simple configuration operations and how one would implement them.  Examples are given in bash shell script (making heavy use of the curl utility) but of course porting to other languages should be straightforward.  All examples assume a GeoServer instance running at http://example.com:8080/geoserver/

A quick curl refresher:
GET a web resource and print it to standard out:

 $ curl http://example.com/ 

 $ curl http://example.com/ \-o myfile.html 

 $ curl http://example.com/form \-F foo=bar,baz=@example.xml 

PUT a file's contents:

 $ curl http://example.com/myfile -T myfile 

These examples are based on the proposed API, not the implemented one.

 One-Step Shapefile Publishing

Assuming the shapefile and accompanying files are stored in ./myshapefile.zip:

$ curl -F typename=myshapefile,data=@myshapefile.zip, \
http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/datastores/mydatastore/featuretypes

Editing Metadata for a Featuretype

For a featuretype named "foo" in datastore "bar":

$ curl -o foo.xml
http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/datastores/bar/featuretypes/foo.xml
$ $EDITOR foo.xml
$ curl -T foo.xml \
http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/datastores/bar/featuretypes/foo.xml

Autoconfigure Pre-loaded Data

To autoconfigure featuretypes that are loaded, but not configured, in datastore "foo":

$ curl -o featuretypes.xml \
http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/datastores/bar/featuretypes.xml
$ for LAYER in $(grep '<layer>' featuretypes.xml | sed 's/<.\?layer>//g');
  do
    curl -F typename=$LAYER \
    http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/datastores/bar/featuretypes
  done

Fetch and Configure Data from URL

For GeoServer to configure a coveragestore fetched from a remote server, http://example.com/mycoverage.tiff:

$ curl -F storename=$LAYER \
-F dataurl=http://example.com/mycoverage.tiff \
http://example.com:8080/geoserver/rest/coveragestores

Notes: We are autoconfiguring a coverage store here, not the actual coverage. Like the currently existing configuration app, we should detect when an autoconfigured datastore or coveragestore contains only a single layer and autoconfigure the layer as well.

Also, will the server be able to infer the type of the data, or do we need to add a form parameter for this as well?