URL for PaymentKeys Application Framework WSDL
About WSDL Object Stubbing AND REST¶
One of the best features of traditional SOAP XML web services is the ability to create class objects through WSDL discovery. These object can then be used during application design and runtime to exchange message information with a web service provider.
Unfortunately, one of the limitations with current REST-ful web service architecture and standards is a lack of tools and support for something resembling WSDL. Many REST-ful web service implementations rely on programmers writing code to concatenate strings of name/value pairs in order to transfer data between applications. This is a step backward for programmers - not a step forward.
The PaymentKeys Application Framework addresses this limitation by utilizing a popular technology called JSON for sending API calls and receiving API responses.
JSON was designed to represent the structure and values of complex runtime objects as a light-weight strings. JSON has the added benefit of enjoying wide-range support and most popular programming languages now provide tools or libraries to serialize a complex objects directly into JSON and deserialize JSON strings back into complex
objects.
By utilizing this ability to easily serialize and deserialize complex objects using JSON for the exchange of data, the PaymentKeys Application Framework can still provide pre-constructed class objects through a traditional WSDL discovery to greatly simplify the programmer's development and interaction with this REST-based API. The code examples throughout this documentation demonstrate how this works.