vibe.web.rest

Endpoint generation

An endpoint is a combination of an HTTP method and a local URI. For each public method of the interface, one endpoint is registered in the URLRouter.

By default, the method and URI parts will be inferred from the method name by looking for a known prefix. For example, a method called getFoo will automatically be mapped to a 'GET /foo' request. The recognized prefixes are as follows:

Member functions that have no valid prefix default to 'POST'. Note that any of the methods defined in vibe.http.common.HTTPMethod are supported through manual endpoint specifications, as described in the next section.

After determining the HTTP method, the rest of the method's name is then treated as the local URI of the endpoint. It is expected to be in standard D camel case style and will be transformed into the style that is specified in the call to registerRestInterface, which defaults to MethodStyle.lowerUnderscored.

Manual endpoint specification

Endpoints can be controlled manually through the use of @path and @method annotations:

@path("/api/")
interface APIRoot {
    // Here we use a POST method
    @method(HTTPMethod.POST)
	// Our method will located at '/api/foo'
	@path("/foo")
	void doSomething();
}

Manual path annotations also allows defining custom path placeholders that will be mapped to function parameters. Placeholders are path segments that start with a colon:

@path("/users/")
interface UsersAPI {
    @path(":name")
    Json getUserByName(string _name);
}

This will cause a request "GET /users/peter" to be mapped to the getUserByName method, with the _name parameter receiving the string "peter". Note that the matching parameter must have an underscore prefixed so that it can be distinguished from normal form/query parameters.

It is possible to partially rely on the default behavior and to only customize either the method or the path of the endpoint:

@method(HTTPMethod.POST)
void getFoo();

In the above case, as 'POST' is set explicitly, the route would be 'POST /foo'. On the other hand, if the declaration had been:

@path("/bar")
void getFoo();

The route generated would be 'GET /bar'.

Properties: @property functions have a special mapping: property getters (no parameters and a non-void return value) are mapped as GET functions, and property setters (a single parameter) are mapped as PUT. No prefix recognition or trimming will be done for properties.

Method style

Method names will be translated to the given 'MethodStyle'. The default style is MethodStyle.lowerUnderscored, so that a function named getFooBar will match the route 'GET /foo_bar'. See vibe.web.common.MethodStyle for more information about the available styles.

Serialization: By default the return values of the interface methods are serialized as a JSON text and sent back to the REST client. To override this, you can use the @resultSerializer attribute

struct TestStruct {int i;}

interface IService {
@safe:
	@resultSerializer!(
		// output_stream implements OutputRange
		function (output_stream, test_struct) {
			output_stream ~= serializeToJsonString(test_struct);
		},
		// input_stream implements InputStream
		function (input_stream) {
			return deserializeJson!TestStruct(input_stream.readAllUTF8());
		},
		"application/json")()
	@resultSerializer!(
		// output_stream implements OutputRange
		function (output_stream, test_struct) {
			output_stream ~= test_struct.i.to!string();
		},
		// input_stream implements InputStream
		function (input_stream) {
			TestStruct test_struct;
			test_struct.i = input_stream.readAllUTF8().to!int();
			return test_struct;
		},
		"plain/text")()
	TestStruct getTest();
}

class Service : IService {
@safe:
	TestStruct getTest() {
		TestStruct test_struct = {42};
		return test_struct;
	}
}

Serialization policies

You can customize the serialization of any type used by an interface by using serialization policies. The following example is using the Base64ArrayPolicy, which means if X contains any ubyte arrays, they will be serialized to their base64 encoding instead of their normal string representation (e.g. "[1, 2, 255]").

@serializationPolicy!(Base64ArrayPolicy)
interface ITestBase64
{
	@safe X getTest();
}