Record-based APIs: the nested records case¶

Available in Servant 0.19 or higher

Servant offers a very natural way of constructing APIs with nested records, called NamedRoutes.

This cookbook explains how to implement such nested-record-based-APIs using NamedRoutes through the example of a Movie Catalog. If you don’t need the nested aspect of the record-based API, you might want to look at Record-based APIs: the simple case cookbook which covers a simpler implementation in which every endpoint is on the same level.

First, we start by constructing the domain types of our Movie Catalog. After, we show you how to implement the API type with the NamedRoutes records. Lastly, we make a Server and a Client out of the API type.

However, it should be understood that this cookbook does not dwell on the built-in servant combinators as the Structuring APIs cookbook already covers that angle.

Boilerplate time!¶

First, let’s get rid of the the extensions and imports boilerplate in order to focus on our new technique:

{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds          #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveAnyClass     #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DerivingStrategies #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric      #-}
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings  #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeOperators      #-}

import GHC.Generics               ( Generic )
import Data.Aeson                 ( FromJSON, ToJSON )
import Data.Proxy                 ( Proxy(..) )
import Network.Wai.Handler.Warp   ( run )

import Servant                    ( NamedRoutes
                                  , Handler, serve )
import Servant.API                (Capture, Delete, Get, Put, QueryParam, ReqBody
                                  , JSON, NoContent (..)
                                  , FromHttpApiData (..),ToHttpApiData(..)
                                  , (:>) )
import Servant.API.Generic        ( (:-) )

import Servant.Client             ( AsClientT, ClientM, client
                                  , (//), (/:) )
import Servant.Client.Generic     ()

import Servant.Server             ( Application, ServerT )
import Servant.Server.Generic     ( AsServer )

Domain context¶

Now that we’ve handled the boilerplate, we can dive into our Movie Catalog domain.

Consider a Movie constructed from a Title and a Year of publication.

data Movie = Movie
    { movieId :: MovieId
    , title :: Title
    , year :: Year
    }
    deriving stock Generic
    deriving anyclass (FromJSON, ToJSON)

type MovieId = String
type Title = String
type Year = Int

Let’s forget about the deriving stuff for now and think about the API that we want to make.

  "version" -> Get Version
  /
api          "list" -> Get [Movie] ?sortBy= Title | Year       (sort by the Title or the Year)
  \        /
  "movies"                Get Movie
           \                /
            Capture MovieId - Put Movie
                            \
                              Delete MovieId

In this example, we create a very simple endpoint for the Version, and several complex endpoints that use nested records for the CRUD part of the movie.

So, the URLs would look like

GET …/version
GET …/movies/list?sortby=Title
GET …/movies//
PUT …/movies//
DELETE …/movies/

API Type¶

Now that we have a very clear idea of the API we want to make, we need to transform it into usable Haskell code:

data API mode = API
    { version :: mode :- "version" :> Get '[JSON] Version
    , movies :: mode :- "movies" :> NamedRoutes MoviesAPI
    } deriving stock Generic

type Version = String -- This will do for the sake of example.

Here, we see the first node of our tree. It contains the two branches “version” and “movies” respectively:

The “version” branch is very simple and self-explanatory. The “movies” branch will contain another node, represented by another record (see above). That is why we need the NameRoutes helper.

Note:

The mode type parameter indicates into which implementation the record’s Generic representation will be transformed—as a client or as a server. We will discuss that later.

Let’s jump into the “movies” subtree node:

data MoviesAPI mode = MoviesAPI
    { list :: mode :- "list" :> QueryParam "SortBy" SortBy :> Get '[JSON] [Movie]
    , movie :: mode :- Capture "movieId" MovieId :> NamedRoutes MovieAPI
    } deriving stock Generic

data SortBy = Year | Title

instance ToHttpApiData SortBy where
  toQueryParam Year = "year"
  toQueryParam Title = "title"

instance FromHttpApiData SortBy where
  parseQueryParam "year" = Right Year
  parseQueryParam "title" = Right Title
  parseQueryParam param = Left $ param <> " is not a valid value"

So, remember, this type represents the MoviesAPI node that we’ve connected earlier to the main API tree.

In this subtree, we illustrated both an endpoint with a query param and also, a capture with a subtree underneath it.

So, let’s go deeper into our API tree.

data MovieAPI mode = MovieAPI
  { get :: mode :- Get '[JSON] (Maybe Movie)
  , update :: mode :- ReqBody '[JSON] Movie :> Put '[JSON] NoContent
  , delete :: mode :- Delete '[JSON] NoContent
  } deriving stock Generic

As you can see, we end up implementing the deepest routes of our API.

Small detail: as our main API tree is also a record, we need the NamedRoutes helper. To improve readability, we suggest you create a type alias:

type MovieCatalogAPI = NamedRoutes API

That’s it, we have our MovieCatalogAPI type!

Let’s make a server and a client out of it!

The Server¶

As you know, we can’t talk about a server, without addressing the handlers.

First, we take our handlers…

versionHandler :: Handler Version
versionHandler = pure "0.0.1"

movieListHandler :: Maybe SortBy -> Handler [Movie]
movieListHandler _ = pure moviesDB

moviesDB :: [Movie]
moviesDB =
  [ Movie "1" "Se7en" 1995
  , Movie "2" "Minority Report" 2002
  , Movie "3" "The Godfather" 1972
  ]

getMovieHandler :: MovieId -> Handler (Maybe Movie)
getMovieHandler requestMovieId = go moviesDB
  where
    go [] = pure Nothing
    go (movie:ms) | movieId movie == requestMovieId = pure $ Just movie
    go (m:ms) = go ms

updateMovieHandler :: MovieId -> Movie -> Handler NoContent
updateMovieHandler requestedMovieId newMovie =
   -- update the movie list in the database...
   pure NoContent

deleteMovieHandler :: MovieId -> Handler NoContent
deleteMovieHandler _ =
   -- delete the movie from the database...
   pure NoContent

And assemble them together with the record structure, which is the glue here.

server ::  API AsServer
server =
  API
    { version = versionHandler
    , movies = moviesHandler
    }

moviesHandler :: MoviesAPI AsServer
moviesHandler =
  MoviesAPI
    { list = movieListHandler
    , movie = movieHandler
    }

movieHandler :: MovieId -> MovieAPI AsServer
movieHandler movieId = MovieAPI
    { get = getMovieHandler movieId
    , update = updateMovieHandler movieId
    , delete = deleteMovieHandler movieId
    }

As you might have noticed, we build our handlers out of the same record types we used to define our API: MoviesAPI and MovieAPI. What kind of magic is this ?

Finally, we can run the server and connect the API routes to the handlers as usual:

api :: Proxy MovieCatalogAPI
api = Proxy

main :: IO ()
main = run 8081 app

app :: Application
app = serve api server

Yay! That’s done and we’ve got our server!

The Client¶

The client, so to speak, is very easy to implement:

movieCatalogClient :: API (AsClientT ClientM)
movieCatalogClient = client api -- remember: api :: Proxy MovieCatalogAPI

We’ve also introduced some operators that help navigate through the nested records.

(//) is used to jump from one record to another. (/:) is used to provide a parameter, whether it be a query param or a capture.

Let’s use those nice helpers for our movie catalog:

listMovies :: Maybe SortBy -> ClientM [Movie]
listMovies sortBy = movieCatalogClient // movies // list /: sortBy

getMovie :: MovieId -> ClientM (Maybe Movie)
getMovie movieId = movieCatalogClient // movies // movie /: movieId // get

updateMovie :: MovieId -> Movie -> ClientM NoContent
updateMovie movieId newMovie = movieCatalogClient // movies // movie /: movieId // update /: newMovie

deleteMovie :: MovieId -> ClientM NoContent
deleteMovie movieId = movieCatalogClient // movies // movie /: movieId // delete

Done! We’ve got our client!

Conclusion¶

We hope that you found this cookbook helpful, and that you now feel more confident using the record-based APIs, nested or not.

If you are interested in further understanding the built-in Servant combinators, see Structuring APIs.

Since NamedRoutes is based on the Generic mechanism, you might want to have a look at Sandy Maguire’s Thinking with Types book.