Outbound REST Integrations

Question 1

What is an Outbound REST Integration, and what does it do?

Answer 1

An Outbound REST Integration is a configuration that allows ServiceNow to send data to an external system using REST protocol.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 2

What is an endpoint?

Answer 2

An endpoint is a specific URL / URI that represents a unique resource or service provided by the server.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 3

What do clients (applications) use endpoints for in outbound Rest integrations?

Answer 3

To send requests and receive responses from the server

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 4

What do HTTP methods do?

Answer 4

Methods determine the type of operation to be performed on the resource identified by the endpoint.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 5

What are some of the common HTTP methods used in RESTful APIs?

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What are they used for?

Answer 5

• GET: Used to retrieve data from the server. It should not have side effects on the server.
• POST: Used to create new resources on the server
• PUT: Typically used to update an existing resource or create it if it doesn’t exist
• DELETE: Used to remove a resource from the server.
• Other less common methods include - PATCH, HEAD, OPTIONS, etc.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 6

What are data formats in the context of Outbound RESTful API’s and sending data?

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What are the most common data formats?

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Is there anything important to note about the most common data formats?

Answer 6

Data formats define how data is structured when it’s exchanged between the client and the server

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JSON (JavaScript Object Notation)
XML (eXtensible Markup Language)

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JSON is widely preferred due to its simplicity, readability, and lightweight nature.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 7

What do Outbound REST Messages allow developers to do?

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Where can it be invoked from?

Answer 7

They allow developers to test web services and view the response body.

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They can be invoked from any server-side script

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 8

What are the 4 most important things included in a REST Message record?

Answer 8

• Endpoint
• Authentication
• HTTP Headers
• HTTP Methods

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 9

What authentication formats does Outbound REST support?

Answer 9

• No Authentication
• Basic
• OAuth 2.0
• Mutual Authentication

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 10

When should you set the Authentication type of your Outbound REST message to No Authentication?

Answer 10

When interacting with public web services that do not require authentication. Some public web services distribute free information without authentication being required.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 11

When setting the Authentication type of your Outbound REST message to Basic, what is passed to the web service?

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What are next steps after assigning the Authentication Type to Basic?

Answer 11

A username and password is passed to the web service

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You need to select a Basic Auth Profile that is a record consisting of a - Name, Username, and Password -

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 12

Most authentication options for Outbound REST integrations are application-level authentications.

How is Mutual Authentication different?

What is Mutual Authentication?

Answer 12

Mutual Authentication is a protocol/socket-level authentication - not an application-level authentication.

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Mutual authentication requires the web service provider and consumer to authenticate with each other before communicating.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 13

What is the easiest way to configure a Method endpoint when handling Outbound REST Integrations?

Answer 13

To configure an HTTP method endpoint, refer to the web service provider’s API documentation. (The company that ServiceNow is trying to communicate with.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 14

What happens with HTTP Method authentication in the default case?

Answer 14

HTTP Methods inherit authentication settings from the outbound REST Message (parent)
Change the authentication type if it differs from the parent’s authentication.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 15

List and describe the 5 main HTTP methods

Answer 15

• POST: New Database Record
• PUT: Update Record
• GET: Get Data
• DELETE: Delete Data
• PATCH - Partial Changes

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 16

After an HTTP method for an Outbound REST message is configured, it needs to be tested to ensure the request is valid and the response returns as expected.

In order to run a test, variables defined in the HTTP method must have values.

How can you give these variables values in order to test you HTTP method?

Answer 16

There is a related link that automatically adds variables to the Variable Substitutions list. This related link is the Auto-generate variables link.
After looking at the Variable Substitutions list, any variables that were not automatically added can be manually defined.

The 3 properties these entries contain are
- Name: Name of the variable. Must be an exact match to the variable name in the HTTP method.
- Escape Type: Options to escape special characters. If the data sent contains special characters, such as the | (pipe character), the set the Escape type value to Escape XML.
- Test Value: Value to use for the variable when testing.

This last property is what is set to have these variables contain data to test.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 17

After configuring an HTTP method and verifying it works as expected by using the Test Related link, it is impractical to continue invoking the API from this avenue.
What is the final development step in this case?

Answer 17

Execute the method from a server-side script.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 18

Which Related Link generates a server-side JavaScript code stub to invoke an Outbound HTTP Request?

Answer 18

The Preview Script Usage related link.

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 19

How do ServiceNow outbound integrations work within the context of “the backend”.

Answer 19

External systems (web service providers) process data (our request sent from SN) and return information back to ServiceNow (a status code and a response body).

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation

Question 20

What do endpoints correspond to within the context of RESTful APIs?

Answer 20

Endpoints correspond to different functionalities or resources
Example: https://api.example.com/users could be an endpoint for accessing user data

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📁 Outbound REST Integrations Developer Documentation