Is the Content Interaction Library the right way to go?

Question

I am trying to understand this a little better but could really do with some advice, guidance, pointers...

I want to to work with my content using the Web 8 Content Service. I know I can get information using requests like:

http://myserver:8081/client/v2/content.svc/Pages(ItemId=518,PublicationId=15)

And other such requests as detailed in the docs.

However, I can't really find too much information on how I could use CIL to pragmatically consume my Content Delivery data. What I was trying, before reaching out here, was to create an application in Visual Studio, installing the CIL package from Nuget and now I want to go through the Content Service to grab some items, such as a Component Presentation.

So, my questions are:

Does someone have a code example that would help me understand more about CIL? Should I be using CIL or should I grab the content in the odata form mentioned above and then do something with it.

By the way, this is more a request to learn than a specific issue so any advice would be very welcome.

Thank you...

Answer 1

You ask for code samples: the point of the CIL is that any code samples for the previous version of Content Delivery ought to work just fine. CIL is intended as a drop-in replacement.

The most obvious example of its use in an open-source project is in DD4T. It's a bit of a specialised example, but perhaps interesting nonetheless: https://github.com/dd4t/DD4T.Providers.SDLWeb8.CIL

Answer 2

The Content Interaction Library (CIL) is the public API to the REST service providing a native JAVA or .NET interface for the developers, so yes - today the recommended way to program against our REST services is to use the CIL.

In the near future we will open up the REST endpoints as a public API, the reason why we chose to move first with the CIL is to ensure that you can upgrade an existing site from old-style to new-style with as little impact as possible.

For new functionalities it does make sense to explore the REST API directly (especially from other languages than .NET or JAVA, like Javascript), but be careful with possible breaking changes until we make it public.