# api
`api` provides a set of utilities for defining
HTTP API on the client side without worrying about
the actual HTTP client (until you send the
request!).
## Api trait
`api::Api` is a trait used to define a remote API.
The developer must implement it for the `struct`
that represents the API endpoint.
For our examples, we'll create a simple client for [httpbin][httpbin]
and its endpoint `/delay:n` (delays responding n seconds
and returns some information about the request).
`Api` has three associated types:
+ `Body` is used to generate the request body and
it must implement the trait `std::io::Read`.
If the endpoint doesn't require a body `std::io::Empty`
should be used.
+ `Reply` defines the response that we expect to receive
from the API.
+ `Error` defines all the expected errors that we could get when
the response is received.
First of all, we need to define the request and the response.
`/delay/:n` has only one parameter in the path and we'll only care about the fields `origin` and `headers` in the JSON response
(we'll use `serde_json` to parse the response's body).
```rust
extern crate api;
#[macro_use]
extern crate serde_derive;
extern crate serde;
extern crate serde_json;
// request for /delay/:n
struct Delay {
delay: u8
}
// it's a subset of the available data
#[derive(Deserialize)]
struct Info {
origin: String, // ip address
headers: BTreeMap<String, String>, // headers received by the server
}
impl api::Api for Delay {
type Reply = Info;
type Body = io::Empty;
type Error = serde_json::Error;
...
}
```
Then, we can start defining how the HTTP request will look like
implementing the trait `Api` for `Delay`.
We'll send a `GET` request to `/delay/:n` and `:n` will be
replaced with the value in `Delay.delay`.
```rust
impl api::Api for Delay {
type Reply = Info;
type Body = io::Empty;
type Error = serde_json::Error;
fn method(&self) -> api::Method {
api::Method::Get
}
fn path(&self) -> String {
// use a safe joiner to create the path!
format!("/delay/{}", self.delay)
}
fn query(&self) -> api::Query {
// we'll send any parameter in the query
Query::new()
}
fn headers(&self) -> api::Header {
let mut headers = api::Header::new();
headers.insert("X-Request-ID", "abcde");
headers
}
fn body(&self) -> std::io::Empty {
std::io::empty()
}
}
```
Now, we need to create the reply `Info` from
the HTTP response represented by the trait `HttpResponse`.
```rust
impl api::Api for Delay {
type Reply = Info;
type Body = io::Empty;
type Error = serde_json::Error;
...
fn parse<R: HttpResponse>(&self, resp: &mut R) -> Result<Info, serde_json::Error> {
serde_json::from_reader(resp.body())
}
}
```
`api` has a trait `Client` to create an adapter for the actual HTTP client, and it implements it for `hyper::Client`.
`Client` has a method `send` that accepts the base URL for the API
and the request.
```rust
extern crate hyper;
use api::Client;
...
fn main() {
let mut client = hyper::Client::new();
let resp = client.send("http://httpbin.org/", Delay { delay: 1 });
println!("{:?}", resp);
}
```
The full code is in `examples/httpbin.rs`
(run `cargo run --example=httpbin --features=use-hyper`).
[httpbin]: https://httpbin.org/ "httpbin"