Defining endpoint’s input/output

An input is described by an instance of the EndpointInput trait, and an output by an instance of the EndpointOutput trait. Some inputs can be used both as inputs and outputs; then, they additionally implement the EndpointIO trait.

Each input or output can yield/accept a value (but doesn’t have to).

For example, query[Int]("age"): EndpointInput[Int] describes an input, which is the age parameter from the URI’s query, and which should be coded (using the string-to-integer codec) as an Int.

The tapir package contains a number of convenience methods to define an input or an output for an endpoint. For inputs, these are:

  • path[T], which captures a path segment as an input parameter of type T
  • any string, which will be implicitly converted to a fixed path segment. Path segments can be combined with the / method, and don’t map to any values (have type EndpointInput[Unit])
  • paths, which maps to the whole remaining path as a Seq[String]
  • query[T](name) captures a query parameter with the given name
  • queryParams captures all query parameters, represented as MultiQueryParams
  • cookie[T](name) captures a cookie from the Cookie header with the given name
  • extractFromRequest extracts a value from the request. This input is only used by server interpreters, ignored by documentation interpreters. Client interpreters ignore the provided value.

For both inputs/outputs:

  • header[T](name) captures a header with the given name
  • headers captures all headers, represented as Seq[(String, String)]
  • cookies captures cookies from the Cookie header and represents them as List[Cookie]
  • setCookie(name) captures the value & metadata of the a Set-Cookie header with a matching name
  • setCookies captures cookies from the Set-Cookie header and represents them as List[SetCookie]
  • body[T, M], stringBody, plainBody[T], jsonBody[T], binaryBody[T], formBody[T], multipartBody[T] captures the body
  • streamBody[S] captures the body as a stream: only a client/server interpreter supporting streams of type S can be used with such an endpoint

For outputs:

  • statusCode maps to the status code of the response
  • statusCode(code) maps to a fixed status code of the response

Combining inputs and outputs

Endpoint inputs/outputs can be combined in two ways. However they are combined, the values they represent always accumulate into tuples of values.

First, descriptions can be combined using the .and method. Such a combination results in an input/output, which maps to a tuple of the given types, and can be stored as a value and re-used in multiple endpoints. As all other values in tapir, endpoint input/output descriptions are immutable. For example, an input specifying two query parameters, start (mandatory) and limit (optional) can be written down as:

val paging: EndpointInput[(UUID, Option[Int])] = 
  query[UUID]("start").and(query[Option[Int]]("limit"))

// we can now use the value in multiple endpoints, e.g.:
val listUsersEndpoint: Endpoint[(UUID, Option[Int]), Unit, List[User], Nothing] = 
  endpoint.in("user" / "list").in(paging).out(jsonBody[List[User]])

Second, inputs can be combined by calling the in, out and errorOut methods on Endpoint multiple times. Each time such a method is invoked, it extends the list of inputs/outputs. This can be useful to separate different groups of parameters, but also to define template-endpoints, which can then be further specialized. For example, we can define a base endpoint for our API, where all paths always start with /api/v1.0, and errors are always returned as a json:

val baseEndpoint: Endpoint[Unit, ErrorInfo, Unit, Nothing] =  
  endpoint.in("api" / "v1.0").errorOut(jsonBody[ErrorInfo])

Thanks to the fact that inputs/outputs accumulate, we can use the base endpoint to define more inputs, for example:

val statusEndpoint: Endpoint[Unit, ErrorInfo, Status, Nothing] = 
  baseEndpoint.in("status").out(jsonBody[Status])

The above endpoint will correspond to the api/v1.0/status path.

Mapping over input values

Inputs/outputs can also be mapped over. As noted before, all mappings are bi-directional, so that they can be used both when interpreting an endpoint as a server, and as a client, as well as both in input and output contexts.

There’s a couple of ways to map over an input/output. First, there’s the map[II](f: I => II)(g: II => I) method, which accepts functions which provide the mapping in both directions. For example:

case class Paging(from: UUID, limit: Option[Int])

val paging: EndpointInput[Paging] = 
  query[UUID]("start").and(query[Option[Int]]("limit"))
    .map((from, limit) => Paging(from, limit))(paging => (paging.from, paging.limit))

Creating a mapping between a tuple and a case class is a common operation, hence there’s also a mapTo(CaseClassCompanion) method, which automatically provides the mapping functions:

case class Paging(from: UUID, limit: Option[Int])

val paging: EndpointInput[Paging] = 
  query[UUID]("start").and(query[Option[Int]]("limit"))
    .mapTo(Paging)

Mapping methods can also be called on an endpoint (which is useful if inputs/outputs are accumulated, for example). The Endpoint.mapIn, Endpoint.mapInTo etc. have the same signatures are the ones above.

Path matching

By default (as with all other types of inputs), if no path input/path segments are defined, any path will match.

If any path input/path segment is defined, the path must match exactly - any remaining path segments will cause the endpoint not to match the request. For example, endpoint.in("api") will match /api, /api/, but won’t match /, /api/users.

To match only the root path, use an empty string: endpoint.in("") will match http://server.com/ and http://server.com.

To match a path prefix, first define inputs which match the path prefix, and then capture any remaining part using paths, e.g.: endpoint.in("api" / "download").in(paths)".

Status codes

To provide a (varying) status code of a server response, use the statusCode output, which maps to a value of type type tapir.model.StatusCode (which is an alias for Int). The tapir.model.StatusCodes object contains known status codes as constants. This type of output is used only when interpreting the endpoint as a server.

Alternatively, a fixed status code can be specified using the statusCode(code) output.

It is also possible to specify how status codes map to different outputs. All mappings should have a common supertype, which is also the type of the output. These mappings are used to determine the status code when interpreting an endpoint as a server, as well as when generating documentation and to deserialise client responses to the appropriate type, basing on the status code.

For example, below is a specification for an endpoint where the error output is a sealed trait ErrorInfo; such a specification can then be refined and reused for other endpoints:

sealed trait ErrorInfo
case class NotFound(what: String) extends ErrorInfo
case class Unauthorized(realm: String) extends ErrorInfo
case class Unknown(code: Int, msg: String) extends ErrorInfo

val baseEndpoint = endpoint.errorOut(
  oneOf(
    statusMapping(StatusCodes.NotFound, jsonBody[NotFound].description("not found")),
    statusMapping(StatusCodes.Unauthorized, jsonBody[Unauthorized].description("unauthorized")),
    statusDefaultMapping(jsonBody[Unknown].description("unknown"))
  )
)

Each mapping, defined using the statusMapping method is a case class, containing the output description as well as the status code. Moreover, default mappings can be defined using statusDefaultMapping. For servers, the default status code for error outputs is 400, and for normal outputs 200 (unless a statusCode is used in the nested output). For clients, a default mapping is a catch-all.