REST

go-restful first working example

In a previous post, I discussed the design of go-restful which is a package for building REST-style WebServices using the Google Go programming language.

Today, I completed the implementation of that package which provides the basics:

  • Creating a WebService with Routes (mapping between Http Request and a Go function)
  • Each Route requires information about the Http method (GET,POST,...), URL Path (/users..), Mime-types and the function it binds to
  • Functions get passed in a Request and a Response
  • The Request is used to access Path and Query parameters , Headers and request content (XML, JSON,...)
  • The Response is used to set Status, Headers, and response content
  • Both Request and Response can Unmarshal and Marshal objects to and from XML,JSON using the standard packages
All of this can best be illustrated with a small example ; a Webservice for CRUD operations on User objects. We start by creating the file userservice.go inside its own folder userservice. 

	package userservice

	import (
		"github.com/emicklei/go-restful"
		"log"
	)

	type User struct {
		Id, Name string
	}

Type User represents our domain object.

go-restful api design

I have been using JAX-RS for many REST-based service implementations in Java.

As part of my journey into the Google Go programming language, I am exploring designs for such REST support using the standard net/http package in Go.

JAX-RS provides a set of Annotation classes which can be used to add meta-data to classes, methods and method arguments. In JAX-RS these annotation are used to specify the mapping between a Http Request to a Java method and its arguments.