I want to write an API ReST endpoint, using Spring 4.0 and Groovy, such that the #RequestBody parameter can be any generic JSON input, and it will be mapped to a Groovy JsonSlurper so that I can simply access the data via the slurper.
The benefit here being that I can send various JSON documents to my endpoint without having to define a DTO object for every format that I might send.
Currently my method looks like this (and works):
#RequestMapping(value = "/{id}", method = RequestMethod.PUT, consumes = MediaType.APPLICATION_JSON_VALUE)
ResponseEntity<String> putTest(#RequestBody ExampleDTO dto) {
def json = new groovy.json.JsonBuilder()
json(
id: dto.id,
name: dto.name
);
return new ResponseEntity(json.content, HttpStatus.OK);
}
But what I want, is to get rid of the "ExampleDTO" object, and just have any JSON that is passed in get mapped straight into a JsonSlurper, or something that I can input into a JsonSlurper, so that I can access the fields of the input object like so:
def json = new JsonSlurper().parseText(input);
String exampleName = json.name;
I initially thought I could just accept a String instead of ExampleDTO, and then slurp the String, but then I have been running into a plethora of issues in my AngularJS client, trying to send my JSON objects as strings to the API endpoint. I'm met with an annoying need to escape all of the double quotes and surround the entire JSON string with double quotes. Then I run into issues if any of my data has quotes or various special characters in it. It just doesn't seem like a clean or reliable solution.
I open to anything that will cleanly translate my AngularJS JSON objects into valid Strings, or anything I can do in the ReST method that will allow JSON input without mapping it to a specific object.
Thanks in advance!
Tonya
How is that possible ? Le's say that in a controller we have something like :
$something = Something:all();
If I just return $something, an json object is returned with content of table {id:1, title :'etc'}
However if I die dump dd($something), I can see $something is an entire collection.
So the return is not returning the collection, is returning json object...?
This is the magic of Laravel, when you return the collection it convert it to jsonautomatically, this is an advantage for building an api.
Note that when a model or collection is cast to a string, it will be
converted to JSON, meaning you can return Eloquent objects directly
from your application's routes!
Check Laravel Documentation (Converting A Model To JSON).
Well, in addition to #Sheikh Heera answer, such conversion happens in the Illuminate\Http\Resonse class here, by checking if the response content is "JSONable", which is true for Illuminate\Support\Collection which Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Collection inherits from.
I have a method in my main controller that return a string that I want to render as JSON.
So I am importing "import grails.converters.JSON" and calling
myMethod() as JSON
, and it works fine. But when I need to get some details of the json response in my integration test.
So in my integration test I have:
void testfoo() {
def bar = controller.myMethod();
def bar.name; //fails
JSON.parse(bar.toString()).name; // doesn't fail
....
..
}
any idea why I need to convert it to a string and then again to a JSON, since it already a JSON?
The value you get back from your method is a grails.converters.JSON, which is not a directly accessible JSON tree as such, but simply an object that knows how to serialize itself as JSON when required. If you want direct access to the JSON tree structure then you need to tell the grails.converters.JSON object to serialize itself and then pass that JSON to JSON.parse to turn it into a JSONElement (or one of its subclasses, in this case presumably a JSONObject).
I'm trying to build a restful API and I'm struggling on how to serialize JSON data to a HTTP query string.
There are a number of mandatory and optional arguments that need to be passed in the request, e.g (represented as a JSON object below):
{
"-columns" : [
"name",
"column"
],
"-where" : {
"-or" : {
"customer_id" : 1,
"services" : "schedule"
}
},
"-limit" : 5,
"return" : "table"
}
I need to support a various number of different clients so I'm looking for a standardized way to convert this json object to a query string. Is there one, and how does it look?
Another alternative is to allow users to just pass along the json object in a message body, but I read that I should avoid it (HTTP GET with request body).
Any thoughts?
Edit for clarification:
Listing how some different languages encodes the given json object above:
jQuery using $.param: -columns[]=name&-columns[]=column&-where[-or][customer_id]=1&-where[-or][services]=schedule&-limit=5&return=column
PHP using http_build_query: -columns[0]=name&-columns[1]=column&-where[-or][customer_id]=1&-where[-or][services]=schedule&-limit=5&return=column
Perl using URI::query_form: -columns=name&-columns=column&-where=HASH(0x59d6eb8)&-limit=5&return=column
Perl using complex_to_query: -columns:0=name&-columns:1=column&-limit=5&-where.-or.customer_id=1&-where.-or.services=schedule&return=column
jQuery and PHP is very similar. Perl using complex_to_query is also pretty similar to them. But none look exactly the same.
URL-encode (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Percent-encoding) your JSON text and put it into a single query string parameter. for example, if you want to pass {"val": 1}:
mysite.com/path?json=%7B%22val%22%3A%201%7D
Note that if your JSON gets too long then you will run into a URL length limitation problem. In which case I would use POST with a body (yes, I know, sending a POST when you want to fetch something is not "pure" and does not fit well into the REST paradigm, but neither is your domain specific JSON-based query language).
There is no single standard for JSON to query string serialization, so I made a comparison of some JSON serializers and the results are as follows:
JSON: {"_id":"5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2","isActive":true,"balance":"$1,446.35","age":32,"name":"Logan Keller","email":"logankeller#artiq.com","phone":"+1 (952) 533-2258","friends":[{"id":0,"name":"Colon Salazar"},{"id":1,"name":"French Mcneil"},{"id":2,"name":"Carol Martin"}],"favoriteFruit":"banana"}
Rison: (_id:'5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2',age:32,balance:'$1,446.35',email:'logankeller#artiq.com',favoriteFruit:banana,friends:!((id:0,name:'Colon Salazar'),(id:1,name:'French Mcneil'),(id:2,name:'Carol Martin')),isActive:!t,name:'Logan Keller',phone:'+1 (952) 533-2258')
O-Rison: _id:'5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2',age:32,balance:'$1,446.35',email:'logankeller#artiq.com',favoriteFruit:banana,friends:!((id:0,name:'Colon Salazar'),(id:1,name:'French Mcneil'),(id:2,name:'Carol Martin')),isActive:!t,name:'Logan Keller',phone:'+1 (952) 533-2258'
JSURL: ~(_id~'5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2~isActive~true~balance~'!1*2c446.35~age~32~name~'Logan*20Keller~email~'logankeller*40artiq.com~phone~'*2b1*20*28952*29*20533-2258~friends~(~(id~0~name~'Colon*20Salazar)~(id~1~name~'French*20Mcneil)~(id~2~name~'Carol*20Martin))~favoriteFruit~'banana)
QS: _id=5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2&isActive=true&balance=$1,446.35&age=32&name=Logan Keller&email=logankeller#artiq.com&phone=+1 (952) 533-2258&friends[0][id]=0&friends[0][name]=Colon Salazar&friends[1][id]=1&friends[1][name]=French Mcneil&friends[2][id]=2&friends[2][name]=Carol Martin&favoriteFruit=banana
URLON: $_id=5973782bdb9a930533b05cb2&isActive:true&balance=$1,446.35&age:32&name=Logan%20Keller&email=logankeller#artiq.com&phone=+1%20(952)%20533-2258&friends#$id:0&name=Colon%20Salazar;&$id:1&name=French%20Mcneil;&$id:2&name=Carol%20Martin;;&favoriteFruit=banana
QS-JSON: isActive=true&balance=%241%2C446.35&age=32&name=Logan+Keller&email=logankeller%40artiq.com&phone=%2B1+(952)+533-2258&friends(0).id=0&friends(0).name=Colon+Salazar&friends(1).id=1&friends(1).name=French+Mcneil&friends(2).id=2&friends(2).name=Carol+Martin&favoriteFruit=banana
The shortest among them is URL Object Notation.
How about you try this sending them as follows:
http://example.com/api/wtf?
[-columns][]=name&
[-columns][]=column&
[-where][-or][customer_id]=1&
[-where][-or][services]=schedule&
[-limit]=5&
[return]=table&
I tried with a REST Client
And on the server side (Ruby with Sinatra) I checked the params, it gives me exactly what you want. :-)
Another option might be node-querystring. It also uses a similar scheme to the ones you've so far listed.
It's available in both npm and bower, which is why I have been using it.
Works well for nested objects.
Passing complex objects as query parameters of a url.
In the example below, obj is the JSON object to pass into query parameters.
Injecting JSON object as query parameters:
value = JSON.stringify(obj);
URLSearchParams to convert a string to an object representing search params. toString to retain string type for appending to url:
queryParams = new URLSearchParams(value).toString();
Pass the query parameters using template literals:
url = `https://some-url.com?key=${queryParams}`;
Now url will contain the JSON object as query parameters under key (user-defined name)
Extracing JSON from url:
This is assuming you have access to the url (either as string or URL object)
url_obj = new URL(url); (only if url is NOT a URL object, otherwise ignore this step)
Extract all query parameters in the url:
queryParams = new URLSearchParams(url_obj.search);
Use the key to extract the specific value:
obj = JSON.parse(queryParams.get('key').slice(0, -1));
slice() is used to extract a tailing = in the query params which is not required.
Here obj will be the same object passed in the query params.
I recommend to try these steps in the web console to understand better.
You can test with JSON examples here: https://json.org/example.html
I have a JObject (I'm using Json.Net) that I constructed with LINQ to JSON (also provided by the same library). When I call the ToString() method on the JObject, it outputs the results as formatted JSON.
How do I set the formatting to "none" for this?
Call JObject's ToString(Formatting.None) method.
Alternatively if you pass the object to the JsonConvert.SerializeObject method it will return the JSON without formatting.
Documentation: Write JSON text with JToken.ToString
You can also do the following;
string json = myJObject.ToString(Newtonsoft.Json.Formatting.None);
you can use JsonConvert.SerializeObject()
JsonConvert.SerializeObject(myObject) // myObject is returned by JObject.Parse() method
JsonConvert.SerializeObject()
JObject.Parse()