Confluence REST APIs vs Java development for dynamically creating spaces and pages

[antony terrence]

I have developed a small DITA plugin that converts DITA content to Confluence format and creates Confluence pages using REST APIs. It does its job ok. Recently, we faced an issue after upgrading to the latest version of Confluence. The pages would not be created unless we refresh pages manually in Confluence. That got me thinking.

Is there any other way to dynamically create Confluence pages and spaces?

Uses cases:

1. Publish dita maps to Confluence
2. When a dita topics are updated, publish the map to Confluence and update the pages without deleting the space - we would like to preserve comments. And we would like to maintain the source in DITA.
3. Convert a bunch of dita maps as a Confluence space

I am able to achieve most of these using REST APIs. But it's slow and then new upgrades can cause problems. 

Is Java based development a better option in this case? If yes, could you please redirect me to some resource that could get me started?

[antony terrence]

@Minh Tran DITA is an external system. It generates XHTML pages. We need to import those pages into Confluence programmatically. Also, the TOC should be retained after posting the pages to Confluence. Is there any other way to do it efficiently than REST APIs?

[Minh Tran]

I am not sure what DITA plug-in is. Is that a plugin from another system?

If yes, REST api might be the only option for you if you want to migrate data that system into Confluence

Another option is to write Confluence plugin but connect to that DITA system database and do the migration via Confluence Java api 

[antony terrence]

@Minh Tran @I am not trying to build a confluence plug-in. I am trying to build a DITA plug-in that will push content to Confluence server. Is that possible without REST APIs

[Minh Tran]

@antony terrence REST api is a good option for creating spaces / pages

However, you can also use the java api to do such thing

You can check out https://developer.atlassian.com/server/confluence/ for how to develop the Confluence plugin and its api