HTTP and HTTPS setup a Restlet environment

Restlet is a handy tool for people to setup an environment running RESTful web service. In order to secure some endpoint resource, sometimes it will be required to use HTTPS for communication, and Restlet, no doubt, supports both of the two ways.

1) HTTP

It's pretty easy to setup the HTTP environment, all you need to do is create a new component, and register the HTTP protocol into the component's server and things will work out as expected.

Component component = new Component();
component.getServers().add(Protocol.HTTP, 8183);
component.getDefaultHost().attach(new XXXApplication());

Notice, the 8183 is the port number you have to provide.

2) HTTPS

Unlike HTTP, in HTTPS mode, you need provide three more things: keystore, keystorePassword, and keyPassword.

For those who are not familiar with keystore: A Java container of keys and certificates is called a keystore. There are two usages for keystores: as a keystore and as a truststore. The keystore contains the material of the local entity, that is the private key and certificate that will be used to connect to the remote entity. Its counterpart, the truststore, contains the certificates that should be used to check the authenticity of the remote entity's certificates.

The steps to construct a keystore is detailed on the page: http://wiki.restlet.org/docs_2.0/13-restlet/27-restlet/46-restlet/213-restlet.html. Basically speaking, you need to use a SSL tool to generate keys first, then self-signed the certification. After all these steps finished,  following the code list below and you will run the HTTPS server successfully.

Component component = new Component();
Server server = component.getServers().add(Protocol.HTTPS, 8183);
server.getContext().getParameters.add("keystorePath", keystorePath);
server.getContext().getParameters.add("keystorePassword", keystorePassword);
server.getContext().getParameters.add("keyPassword', keyPassword);
component.start();

As the same theory, if you need to run any client side code as well under the same project, simply add the client's support protocol to the component as:

component.getClients().add(Protocol.HTTPS);