Consuming Delta Responses¶

Delta responses is a feature on top of OData 2.0 for requesting changes. The feature is defined in OData 4.0 and this is a preliminary and lightweight implementation close to the OData 4.0 specification (see here).

How delta responses can be produced by an OData service is documented here: server side delta responses.

Use Case¶

A client reads a feed and later wants to get only the update of changed and deleted entries.

Principle¶

A client has to read a complete (paged) feed. With the last feed page the service has to provide a delta link instead of a next link. A delta link us usually the same feed url containing a delta token as proprietary query parameter. With the delta link the client can query the service again and gets back a delta feed containing entries which were changed or deleted since the complete feed was received.

Examples¶

Example for a delta link: http://<host>:<port>/odata/Rooms?!deltatoken=123

Delta Feed Handling¶

Depends on the general client sample here

// retrieve a feed
ODataFeed feed = client.readFeed("Container1", "Rooms", contentType);
String deltaLink = feed.getFeedMetadata().getDeltaLink();

// store feed data
List<ODataEntry> entries = feed.getEntries();

// get delta link from feed
String deltaLink = feed.getFeedMetadata().getDeltaLink();

// query delta feed using delta link
ODataDeltaFeed deltaFeed = client.readDeltaFeed("Container1", "Rooms", contentType, deltaLink);

List<ODataEntry> changedEntries = deltaFeed.getEntries();
List<DeletedEntryMetada) deletedEntries = deltaFeed.getDeletedEntries();

// proceed with data handling of entries, changedEntries and deletedEntries    

Response Deserialization¶

Precondition: Query the delta link using any HTTP client.

InputStream content = ...; // retrieve content    

EdmEntityContainer entityContainer = edm.getEntityContainer("Container1");

ODataFeed deltaFeed = EntityProvider.readDeltaFeed(contentType, entityContainer.getEntitySet("Rooms"), 
  content, EntityProviderReadProperties.init().build());

Links¶

• Delta Links (for Atom and Json)
• Tombstones RFC6721 for deleted entries in Atom format
• Deleted Entries in Json as a lightweight implementation of Delta Responses