I'm looking to integrate a light-weight forum feature into an existing GWT website. The front-end is written in GWT/SmartGWT and the backend is written in PHP. The communication is through a RESTful API using JSON.
I have looked into the forums of some popular software (SMF, phpBB, etc.) but was unable to find any references to a RESTful web API to make integration into an existing non-PHP site easier. The closest I came is to vBulletin's Mobile API - https://www.vbulletin.com/forum/content.php/334-mobile-api. Unfortunately, vBulletin isn't free.
Some recent threads I have seen on some of the forums basically say that the user should write their own web services wrapper around the internal API. However, that seem like a bad solution that can lead to all kinds of additional bugs.
So, my question is this - does anyone know of an existing, free forum software (PHP, Perl, Ruby OK, but NOT Java) that provides a RESTful web services interface?
An ancillary question to this is: has anyone used Restler (http://luracast.com/products/restler/) to turn a forum software's published API into a RESTful interface? I'm sure this method would be fraught with potential problems, but one can always hope.
PS: I saw the following older questions on stackoverflow, but they don't seem to be that helpful and are now kind of old:
- Open-Source Forum with API
- PHP forum software that integrates easily with existing website? -- the OP's website is built in PHP, which makes integration a lot easier
- forum software with a simple RESTful API support -- Elgg, while a great social networking framework, doesn't include a forum plugin!
- A forum solution with an Q&A option and API -- same issue as OP, Drupal is really heavy-weight and all I want is the forum functionality.
Looks like Vanilla Forums fits your bill, they support JSON/XML based API
I wrote a semi-RESTful API for SMF forums that will do anything you like except create and destroy the SMF cookie (login/logout), which you might be able to accomplish yourself using cURL http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=458832.0 I think it might have been you who posted there asking for it and gave me the idea
来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/7864435/restful-interface-to-php-forum-software