20.22. WADL Support

The Neo4j REST API is a truly RESTful interface relying on hypermedia controls (links) to advertise permissible actions to users. Hypermedia is a dynamic interface style where declarative constructs (semantic markup) are used to inform clients of their next legal choices just in time.

[Caution]Caution

RESTful APIs cannot be modeled by static interface description languages like WSDL or WADL.

However for some use cases, developers may wish to expose WADL descriptions of the Neo4j REST API, particularly when using tooling that expects such.

In those cases WADL generation may be enabled by adding to neo4j.conf:

unsupported.dbms.wadl_generation_enabled=true
[Caution]Caution

WADL is not an officially supported part of the Neo4j server API because WADL is insufficiently expressive to capture the set of potential interactions a client can drive with Neo4j server. Expect the WADL description to be incomplete, and in some cases contradictory to the real API. In any cases where the WADL description disagrees with the REST API, the REST API should be considered authoritative. WADL generation may be withdrawn at any point in the Neo4j release cycle.