OData V3 demo services · OData - the Best Way to REST

In April we shipped the OData version 3 along with the 5.0 release of WCF Data Services. To make it easier for you discover the new features and for us to show you some of them, we’re now making available the OData demo services which use the OData V3 protocol.

The new services are hosted side by side with old demo services which we didn’t change. The new demo services are using the WCF Data Services 5.0.1-rc release currently, and we will update them to the newer version once it becomes available.

There are 3 demo services:

The read-only Demo service, which has an updated model to use some V3 features as described below, is hosted here:

https://services.odata.org/V3/OData/OData.svc/

The read-write Demo service, which is the exact same model as the read-only Demo service including new V3 features, is hosted here:

https://services.odata.org/V3/(S(readwrite))/OData/OData.svc/

The read-only Northwind service, which is the exact same model as the existing Northwind service, is hosted here:

https://services.odata.org/V3/Northwind/Northwind.svc/

Here are the V3 features we’ve enabled so far.

Actions

The Product type has a Discount action on it which takes a single parameter discountPercentage of type Edm.Int32. The action takes the Price of the product it’s applied to and decreases it by the percentage specified by the parameter. For example:

GET https://services.odata.org/V3/(S(plcxuejnllfvrrecpvqbehxz))/OData/OData.svc/Products(1)

Will return a product with Price: 3.5

POST https://services.odata.org/V3/(S(plcxuejnllfvrrecpvqbehxz))/OData/OData.svc/Products(1)/Discount HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json;odata=verbose

{ "discountPercentage": 25 }

The response should be 204 No Content.

And now again

GET https://services.odata.org/V3/(S(plcxuejnllfvrrecpvqbehxz))/OData/OData.svc/Products(1)

Returns a product with Price: 2.625

Spatial

The Supplier type has a property Location which is of type Edm.GeographyPoint. You can see it here:

https://services.odata.org/V3/OData/OData.svc/Suppliers(0)

Any and All

The service now supports any and all operators. For example:

https://services.odata.org/V3/OData/OData.svc/Categories?$filter=Products/any(p: p/Rating ge 4)

Inheritance support

You can now address properties on derived types. The demo service doesn’t have a sample property like that yet, but you can try the new URL syntax with type cast anyway:

https://services.odata.org/V3/OData/OData.svc/Products/ODataDemo.Product

Patch support

You can send PATCH requests instead of MERGE. The behavior is identical otherwise.

Prefer header support

You can specify a Prefer header in create or update requests and ask the server to either omit or include the payload. For example:

PATCH https://services.odata.org/V3/(S(plcxuejnllfvrrecpvqbehxz))/OData/OData.svc/Products(1) HTTP/1.1
Accept: application/json;odata=verbose
Content-Type: application/json;odata=verbose
Prefer: return-content
DataServiceVersion: 3.0;

{ "Price": "3.5" }

Responds with (trimmed for readability):

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: application/json;odata=verbose;charset=utf-8
Preference-Applied: return-content
DataServiceVersion: 3.0;

{"d":{
"__metadata":{…},
…
"ID":1,
"Name":"Milk",
"Description":"Low fat milk",
"ReleaseDate":"1995-10-01T00:00:00",
"DiscontinuedDate":null,
"Rating":3,
"Price":"3.5"
}}

Association links

Each navigation link can now also specify an association link which is the URL to manipulate the association with. For example this is a part of the ATOM payload for ~/Product(1):

We are working on adding more V3 features to the Demo service and we’ll be updating the service as we have them available.

Vitek Karas
Sr. Software Development Engineer, OData, Microsoft.