• Do you require the information retrieved from your external HTTP API to be available as data points / point values? (e.g. you want to store history for them in the Mango time series database, or you want the values to be available on the watch list etc)
• Is the external HTTP API available on the internet / accessible from the client web browser? If so you may be able to request the data directly from the web browser via a XHR request.

To add some context, the end goal of this module I'm building is essentially a more refined version of the HTTP Retriever data source, dedicated to only a specific site with a specific API protocol. I want to be able to add/select certain parameters for an HTTP GET request (likely as a drop down box of some sort), and then automatically parse the resulting JSON file.

I personally would be hesitant to create a whole module for this. You can probably achieve this ambition using the HttpBuilder in a script. You would just have to set values to points to change how the script behaves instead of configure it as a data source.

@phildunlap In that case, could you elaborate a bit more on what I do have to add to the vanilla module in order to get a drop down box or a text field and such?

Are you talking about in the new UI? e.g. on a dashboard designer page? You will need to have an AngularJSModuleDefinition and a REST API class (annotated with @RestController and in the com.infiniteautomation.mango.rest.v2 package).

I might add a new simpler example to the https://github.com/infiniteautomation/ma-modules-contrib repo.

Classes which extend ModuleElementDefinition classes are reflected out of modules when loading them in startup. So, no, you do not need to place them in any particular package. REST controllers are not unconditionally reflected out of modules, though, so currently you would need to place rest controllers in com.serotonin.mango.rest.v1 or com.serotonin.mango.rest.v2

Also, from what I understand so far, modules are defined by the features in this folder: https://github.com/infiniteautomation/ma-core-public/tree/main/Core/src/com/serotonin/m2m2/module. How can I add these features to that vanilla module? Is there a package I have to put them in, or are there dependencies I need to change in the pom file, ect? For example, say I wanted to use the Script Source Definition (I believe this gives the black scripting box like in the scripting data source, but correct me if I'm wrong!). How would I add that particular element to the vanilla module?

To add some context, the end goal of this module I'm building is essentially a more refined version of the HTTP Retriever data source, dedicated to only a specific site with a specific API protocol. I want to be able to add/select certain parameters for an HTTP GET request (likely as a drop down box of some sort), and then automatically parse the resulting JSON file.

Here is a repository that I'll be adding to in the coming weeks but for now it has one example polling data source that works with Mango 3.6.0 its a vanilla module that can be used as a starting point:

https://github.com/infiniteautomation/ma-modules-contrib

Here is another one I recently completed as a user module that is not part of the Mango codebase:

https://github.com/terrypacker/mango-modules/tree/master/acurite-ds

There is one thing that both of these pom.xml files don't have that would allow you to develop and build them without any of the Mango code checked out locally, which would be to reference the IAS Maven repositories. You can add them into the pom like this:

<repositories>
    <repository>
        <releases>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
            <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
        </snapshots>
        <id>ias-snapshots</id>
        <name>Mango Dependencies</name>
        <url>https://maven.mangoautomation.net/repository/ias-snapshot/</url>
    </repository>
    <repository>
        <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
        <id>ias-releases</id>
        <name>Mango Dependencies</name>
        <url>https://maven.mangoautomation.net/repository/ias-release/</url>
    </repository>
 </repositories>
 <pluginRepositories>
    <pluginRepository>
        <releases>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </snapshots>
        <id>ias-snapshots</id>
        <name>Mango Dependencies</name>
        <url>https://maven.mangoautomation.net/repository/ias-snapshot/</url>
    </pluginRepository>
    <pluginRepository>
        <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
        </releases>
        <snapshots>
            <enabled>false</enabled>
        </snapshots>
        <id>ias-releases</id>
        <name>Mango Dependencies</name>
        <url>https://maven.mangoautomation.net/repository/ias-release/</url>
    </pluginRepository>
 </pluginRepositories>