Quick Start: Add a New Path

Anatomy of a path

This topic looks at how paths are constructed and wired to response objects in an A127 project's Swagger configuration file.

• Simple path example
• More about route handling
• Request and response models
• Next steps

Simple path example

You've seen paths in previous Quick Start topics. The /hello path in the original Quick Start example looks like this:

  paths:
    /hello:
      # binds a127 app logic to a route
      x-swagger-router-controller: hello_world
      x-a127-apply: {}
      get:
        description: Returns 'Hello' to the caller
        # used as the method name of the controller
        operationId: hello
        security:
          - oauth2: []
        parameters:
          - name: name
            in: query
            description: The name of the person to whom to say hello
            required: false
            type: string
        responses:
          "200":
            description: Success
            schema:
              # a pointer to a definition
              $ref: #/definitions/HelloWorldResponse
          # responses may fall through to errors
          default:
            description: Error
            schema:
              $ref: #/definitions/ErrorResponse

The parts of the path definition include:

• x-swagger-router-controller is a custom Apigee-127 extension to the Swagger model that maps a path to a controller file. For instance, /weather gets mapped to api/controller/weather.js. See More about route handling below.

• operationId maps to a method name in the controller file.

• security: can be used to apply security schemes such as OAuth, Basic authentication, and API keys.

• parameters: specifies any parameters used by the path. They can be passed as query or form parameters, or headers.

• x-a127-apply can be used to apply volos quotas (Quickstart: Add Quotas) and caches (Quickstart: Add Caching).

• The other keys conform to the Swagger 2.0 specifications. The parameters is a YAML array that defines all the parameters required for the call. The responses object defines the response specifications for response codes.

More about route handling

As noted previously, the x-swagger-router-controller maps a path to a controller file. You can specify a router handler either at the path level or operation level in the Swagger file. For example, at the path level, like this:

paths:
  /hello:
    x-swagger-router-controller: hello_world
    x-a127-apply: {}
    get:
      description: Returns 'Hello' to the caller
      # used as the method name of the controller
      operationId: hello

or at the operation level, like this:

paths:
  /hello:
    x-a127-apply: {}
    get:
      x-swagger-router-controller: hello_world
      description: Returns 'Hello' to the caller
      # used as the method name of the controller
      operationId: hello

Routers applied at the operation level override routers specified at the path level.

When you call your API with a given path, like GET /hello, the middleware checks to make sure there is an operation (e.g., "get") defined for that path. If not, then a 405 code is returned. If the path does have a corresponding operation defined, then a 200 response is returned. If you are running in mock mode, you'll get back a mock response, otherwise, you'll get back whatever response is returned by the controller. If you hit a path that is not specified in the Swagger file at all, then that's a 404.

When you call your API, the middleware attempts to match a route defined in the Swagger file to a corresponding controller method. When you test your API, one of three possible results can occur:

• A route defined in the Swagger file matches a controller file, and the controller has a method for the operation. In this case, either the route method is executed or, if you are in mock mode, a mock response is returned.

• A route defined in the Swagger file matches a controller file, but there is no method in the controller for the operation. In this case, a 405 HTTP code is returned.

• The requested route is not present in the Swagger file. In this case, a 404 code is returned.

Request and response models

The Swagger specification allows you to define both request and the response models (also called schemas). The path definition described in the previous section is an example of a request model.

Here's an example of an API that returns a relatively complex object. It is the Open Weather API that's used in the Apigee-127 samples project on GitHub.

The Open Weather API returns an object that looks like the following:

{
    "coord": {
        "lon": -77.58,
        "lat": 35.27
    },
    "sys": {
        "type": 1,
        "id": 1786,
        "message": 0.1057,
        "country": "United States of America",
        "sunrise": 1409913972,
        "sunset": 1409959883
    },
    "weather": [
        {
            "id": 500,
            "main": "Rain",
            "description": "light rain",
            "icon": "10n"
        },
        {
            "id": 211,
            "main": "Thunderstorm",
            "description": "thunderstorm",
            "icon": "11n"
        }
    ],
    "base": "cmc stations",
    "main": {
        "temp": 78.58,
        "pressure": 1021,
        "humidity": 88,
        "temp_min": 73.4,
        "temp_max": 82.4
    },
    "wind": {
        "speed": 5.62,
        "deg": 40
    },
    "clouds": {
        "all": 90
    },
    "dt": 1409876198,
    "id": 4474436,
    "name": "Kinston",
    "cod": 200
}

To wire the path to the schema, you use the responses element to refer to the schema definition. In this example, we specify two responses, a 200 and an Error response. Note that you use $ref syntax to refer to each specific schema definition, listed in the #/definitions section (which we describe below).

Note: You must use explicit references of the form $ref: #/definitions/. For example: $ref: #/definitions/WeatherResponse.

Note: In this case, all other responses that are not 200 will be referred to the Error response schema.

    paths:
      /weather:
        ...      
        responses:
          "200":
            description: Success
            schema:
              $ref: #/definitions/WeatherResponse
          default:
            description: Error
            schema:
              $ref: #/definitions/ErrorResponse

Then in the #/definitions section of the Swagger document we define the WeatherResponse schemas that we referenced from the /paths section. Here is the schema that represents the JSON returned by the weather API (shown previously). These schemas are primarily used to provide response objects for mock mode:

definitions:
  WeatherResponse:
    type: "object"
    properties: 
      base: 
        type: "string"
      clouds: 
        type: "object"
        properties: 
          all: 
            type: "number"
      cod: 
        type: "number"
      coord: 
        type: "object"
        properties: 
          lat: 
            type: "number"
          lon: 
            type: "number"
      dt: 
        type: "number"
      id: 
        type: "number"
      main: 
        type: "object"
        properties: 
          humidity: 
            type: "number"
          pressure: 
            type: "number"
          temp_max: 
            type: "number"
          temp_min: 
            type: "number"
          temp: 
            type: "number"
      name: 
        type: "string"
      sys: 
        type: "object"
        properties: 
          country: 
            type: "string"
          id: 
            type: "number"
          message: 
            type: "number"
          sunrise: 
            type: "number"
          sunset: 
            type: "number"
          type: 
            type: "number"
      weather: 
        type: "array"
        items: 
          type: "object"
          properties: 
            description: 
              type: "string"
            icon: 
              type: "string"
            id: 
              type: "number"
            main: 
              type: "string"
      wind: 
        type: "object"
        properties: 
          deg: 
            type: "number"
          speed: 
            type: "number"

Next steps

Now that you know have added a path, its time to implement the actual controller