What is SOAP and How Does Cerberus Use It

What is SOAP?

SOAP is an acronym for Simple Object Access Protocol. SOAP is a method of describing operations that can be performed by a service. Many programming languages have tools that support SOAP, allowing developers to easily write programs and scripts to utilize services exposed through SOAP.

How Cerberus uses SOAP        

Cerberus uses SOAP to define commands that can be issued to Cerberus FTP Server. Nearly everything that can be done from the Cerberus Administration GUI is described in Cerberus’ SOAP API: adding, removing, and modifying users, groups, and interfaces, retrieving server statistics and managing public shares, to name a few.

 The complete API is described by two files, Cerberus.wsdl and ns1.xsd, both of which can be downloaded from your Cerberus FTP Server on the HTTPS Admin listener port. By default, the URLs are https://localhost:8443/wsdl/Cerberus.wsdl and https://localhost:8443/wsdl/ns1.xsd.

Together, these files define 87 operations and 65 object types. The list of supported operations (as of version 10.0.10.0) are listed at the bottom of the Understanding Cerberus SOAP API guide.

What you can do with SOAP

Cerberus SOAP API allows you to integrate Cerberus into your existing IT solutions. Using the API, Cerberus FTP Server can exchange data and events with the rest of the applications serving your users.

With the API you might:

• Write specialized tools for administering Cerberus FTP Server
• Perform mass changes to Cerberus users and groups
• Synchronize users and groups between Cerberus and other stores (e.g. Active Directory)