NAME
Plack::App::unAPI - Serve via unAPI
VERSION
version 0.3
SYNOPSIS
use Plack::App::unAPI;
my $app1 = sub { ... }; # a PSGI application
my $app2 = sub { ... }; # another PSGI application
my $app3 = sub { ... }; # another PSGI application
unAPI
json => [ $app1 => 'application/javascript' ],
xml => [ $app2 => 'application/xml' ],
txt => [ $app3 => 'text/plain', docs => 'http://example.com' ];
To run this script you can simply call plackup yourscript.psgi
. Then try:
http://localhost:5000/?id=abc&format=json # calls $app1->($env);
http://localhost:5000/?id=abc&format=xml # calls $app2->($env);
http://localhost:5000/?id=abc&format=txt # calls $app3->($env);
http://localhost:5000/ # returns list of formats
http://localhost:5000/?format=xml # returns list of formats
http://localhost:5000/?id=abc # returns list of formats
PSGI applications can be created for instance with Plack::Component or by starting with the following boilerplate:
use Plack::Request;
my $app1 = sub {
my $id = Plack::Request->new(shift)->param('id') // '';
my $obj = lookup_object( $id ); # look up object
return $obj
? [ 200, [ 'Content-Type' => $type ], [ $obj ] ]
: [ 404, [ 'Content-Type' => 'text/plain' ], [ 'not found' ] ];
};
To further facilitate such simple applications, this module exports the function wrAPI
(see below). For instance if your function lookup_object
either returns an XML string or undef
when passed an identifier, you can add it to your unAPI server as:
xml => wrAPI( \&lookup_object => 'application/xml' );
DESCRIPTION
This implements an unAPI server as PSGI application. unAPI is a tiny HTTP API to query discretely identified objects in different formats. The basic idea of unAPI is having two HTTP GET query parameters: id to select an object, and format to select a format. If no (or no supported) format is specified, a list of formats (in XML) is returned instead.
This implementation routes the request to different PSGI applications based on a known format parameter, or sends the format list. A PSGI application is a Perl code reference or an object with a call
method that gets an environment variable and returns an array reference with defined structure as HTTP response.
METHODS
new ( %formats [, _ => { %options } ] )
To create a server object you must provide a list of mappings between format names and PSGI applications to serve requests for the particular format. Each application is wrapped in an array reference, followed by its MIME type and optional information fields about the format. So the general form is:
format => [ $app => $type, %about ]
The following information fields are supported:
- docs
-
An URL of a document that describes the format
- always
-
If set to a true value, the application is used also if no id parameters has been supplied. Set to false by default, so a format list with HTTP status code 300 is returned unless both, format and id have been supplied.
- qs
-
A number between 0.000 and 1.000 that describes the "source quality" for content negotiation. The default value is 1.
- encoding
-
One or more content encodings, for content negotiation. Typical values are
gzip
orcompress
. - charset
-
The charset for content negotiation (
undef
by default). - language
-
One or more languages for content negotiation (
undef
by default).
General options for all formats can be passed with the _
field (no format can have the name _
).
By default, the result is checked to be valid PSGI (at least to some degree) and errors in single applications are catched - in this case a response with HTTP status code 500 is returned.
unAPI ( %formats )
The unAPI
keyword as constructor alias is exported by default. To prevent exporting, include this module via use Plack::App::unAPI ();
.
wrAPI ( $code, $type, [ %about ] )
This method returns an array reference to be passed to the constructor. The first argument must be a simple code reference that gets called with id
as only parameter. If its return value is undef
, a 404 response is returned. Otherwise the code reference must return a serialized byte string (NO unicode characters) that has MIME type $type
.
formats ( [ $id [, $header ] ] )
Returns a PSGI response with status 300 (Multiple Choices) and an XML document that lists all formats. The optional header argument has default value <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
.
variants
Returns a list of content variants to be used in HTTP::Negotiate. The return value is an array reference of array references, each with seven elements: format name, source quality (qs), type, encoding, charset, language, and size. The return value for the example given above would be:
[
['json','1','application/javascript',undef,undef,undef,0],
['xml','1','application/xml',undef,undef,undef,0],
['txt','1','text/plain',undef,undef,undef,0]
]
SEE ALSO
Chudnov et al. (2006): Introducing unAP. In: Ariadne, 48, <http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue48/chudnov-et-al/>.
AUTHOR
Jakob Voss
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This software is copyright (c) 2012 by Jakob Voss.
This is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as the Perl 5 programming language system itself.