Reading the catalog

In this module we will learn how to read out the GeoServer configuration via the REST API.

As already mentioned in the previous chapter, a key condition of REST is the addressability. Thereby each catalog configuration (= resource or endpoint) in GeoServer has an unique URL.

At first we will investigate the REST API via the browser. At the same time we are using the HTTP operation GET to retrieve information from the server.

Open up a browser window and navigate to the following URL (Note: You will be prompted for your GeoServer user and password):
```
  http://localhost/geoserver/rest
```

You will see a simple HTML list which contains the top endpoints provided by the REST API. The list view is fully controllable and clearly assigned. A selection in the browser (for example the entry workspaces) navigates the browser to unique URL http://localhost/geoserver/rest/workspaces. The structure of the list (when selecting a workspace) follows the logical structure of the GeoServer catalog we already met in the previous sections:

workspace
  |
  +--datastore
       |
       +--featuretype

The above actions in the browser will call an endpoint in HTML format by default. The GeoServer also supports the formats JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) and XML (Extensible Markup Language), which are particularly relevant in the manipulation of a resource we will use later on.

Switch to a new tab in your browser. Then open and compare the following outputs:

  http://localhost/geoserver/rest/workspaces

  http://localhost/geoserver/rest/workspaces.json

  http://localhost/geoserver/rest/workspaces.xml

In the next step we want to get a full description of the feature type countries we created in the previous module in format JSON. Copy the following request in your browser and explore the output:
```
  http://localhost/geoserver/rest/workspaces/momo/datastores/db_momo_ws/featuretypes/countries.json
```