API documentation

The API documentations ( Application Programming Interface) describe the public interfaces of FirstSpirit. These interfaces can be used in templates and scripts to access all kinds of different values, functions, etc.

Here, the Access-API and the Developer-API are differentiated. The difference results from different requirements concerning the stability. These will described in the following. For each API another colour is used (Access-API = blue, Developer-API = red).

Access API

The Access API is one of the most important interfaces of FirstSpirit. For this reason, it is subject to the highest stability requirements. These can be described as follows:

• The Access API remains stable within a major version line.
• The Access API is subject to the deprecation announcement:
  
  • Methods, classes and functions which are to be changed are marked as deprecated (@deprecated) in the current version line first.
  • If a deprecation is introduced with a minor version, it will remain in effect throughout individual releases of this minor version; thus, no code changes will be necessary to maintain compatibility with releases of this minor version.
  • Methods, classes and functions which are marked as deprecated in this way can be removed from the Access API or changed in the following major version.
• When transitioning between minor or release versions, the use of released APIs does not require changes to the source code. In certain circumstances, transitioning between releases may require a module to be compiled against the target version. In this case, the respective module must be updated (see FirstSpirit Manual for Administrators, Chapter "Modules" and the FirstSpirit Manual for developers (Components) (German only)).

The FirstSpirit Access API documentation can be opened by clicking the following link:

• Open FirstSpirit Access API documentation

Developer API

In contrast to the Access API, the requirements concerning the stability for the Developer API are lower:

• The Developer API remains stable within a minor version line, i.e. methods, classes and functions may be changed in case of a minor version change.

The FirstSpirit Developer API documentation can be opened by clicking the following link:

• Open FirstSpirit Developer API documentation

Java SE Core API

The Java Standard Edition (SE) Core API documentation by Oracle (general functions) can be opened by clicking the following link:

Open Java SE Core API documentation