That is the question. Whether it’s nobler in your mind to struggle with the learning curve of SuiteTalk and the SuiteTalk Schema Browser, or to suffer the slings and arrows of those who say, “You’re using C#?!?”.
To REST. To REST. SOAP no more. And by REST we end the heartache.
Everyone knows I’m a huge supporter and champion of the NetSuite platform. There really isn’t anything you can’t do with it, whether you want to create custom functionality or integrate it with 3rd party systems, which I’ve done a ton of. My method of choice for integrating other systems with NetSuite used to be SuiteTalk, their web services API. And my programming language of choice was php using NetSuite’s php ToolKit. I was self-taught, and had a great time pushing and pulling data all over the place.
However, it’s not easy to learn and deploy SuiteTalk applications. This is not a complaint or criticism – every system of the size and complexity of NetSuite is going to require a significant learning curve. You’d expect the same from SAP, Oracle, or any other major ERP provider.
But that was then, before the days of NetSuite RESTLets. It’s all so easy now.
RESTLets are custom REST interfaces to and from NetSuite, and they’re super slick and super easy to create. If you know JavaScript and the SuiteScript library of NetSuite functions, you’re pretty much set to go. And if you’re a php kind of person, throw in some standard and simple cURL functions, and you’ll be off to the races. JSON or XML input and output – not a problem.
RESTLets are now my preferred integration option.