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JSON

Document Type: Explanation

hashtag
Handling JSON requests

We're going to look at some selections from the sire/demo_mandelbrot_ui.sire cog that you saw when you first installed Pallas on your system.

:| json

;; <etc> ;;


= (asJsonRow m)
# datacase m
* JVEC|v | SOME v
* _      | NONE

= (asJsonNum m)
# datacase m
* JNUM|n | SOME n
* _      | NONE

(bindMaybe mVal k)=(maybeCase mVal NONE k)

;; <etc> ;;

= (parseFract jsonBS)
@ res@[json leftover] (parseJson jsonBS)
: rw < **bindMaybe (asJsonRow json)
: w < **bindMaybe (asJsonNum idx-0-rw)
: h < **bindMaybe (asJsonNum idx-1-rw)
| SOME [w h]

;; <etc> ;;
# switch method
* POST
  # switch path
  * b#{/fract}
    # datacase (parseFract body)
    * NONE
      : _ < fork (syscall (**HTTP_ECHO rid 400 b#bad [] b#{}))
      | return ()
    * (SOME dims)
      @ [w h] dims
      : !fractBar < trkTimer {mandelbrotDemo} (mandelbrotDemo w h)
      : _ < fork (syscall (**HTTP_ECHO rid 200 b#ok [] fractBar))
      | return ()
;; <etc> ;;

Taking that one chunk at a time:

Import json.sire, from which we'll need the parseJson function soon.

We'll look at datacase next, but consider it a sort of switch or if/else for now.

asJsonRow takes some parsed JSON and returns it as a sire row (if there's anything there. That's where datacase comes in). asJsonNum takes some parsed JSON and returns it as a nat. sire/json.sire has similar helpers for JSON's nulls, boolens, strings and maps (objects) (JNULL, JFALSE, JTRUE, JSTR, JMAP).

The mandelbrot backend accepts a width and height from the client side and generates a fractal of these dimensions.

parseFract takes a JSON-y bar (which it happens to expect to be a single "row" of json numbers) and uses the above-described two helpers to bind these values to w and h. Width and height.

Now that we have all the handlers in place, we can actually take a request from the browser:

We haven't yet looked at how a webserver cog works, but the point here is:

  • We get a POST request at a particular path from the web client

  • We parse the request body as JSON

  • Assuming we got dimensions as expected, we generate the fractal (fractBar) and respond to the request with this value. Responding with JSON is what we're looking at next.

hashtag
Responding with JSON

For an example of providing a JSON response from a cog to a web client, we'll pull some lines from sire/demo_runcog_site.sire, an example app that allows a web client to start and stop toy timer cogs as well as check the current status of any cogs in the app:

Once again, json is imported, which will give us many functions we need. jsonContentType is a convenient binding that will make it easier to set response headers.

And again, we're handling an HTTP request by switching on method and path in order to handle an HTTP GET /status.

We haven't seen readRef and a few other bits here, but suffice it to say that we're fetching some values from the cog's "state" and binding them to kvs.

The jval binding is doing most of the work here. The mandelbrot cog we saw previously used some helper functions for JSON parsing while here the JSON encoding is happening directly inline with JMAP and related functions from the json library. It's good to see both approaches.

We won't go through this line-by-line - you can handle it by this stage. The broad strokes are:

  • For each of the timer cogs we know about, encode their statuses depending on which state they're in. These are encoded as a row of JSON objects (JMAP).

  • Get a JSON bar and appropriate headers and provide an HTTP 200 response with these values.

After doing two POST /spin requests to start a couple timers, a GET /status HTTP response provides this JSON body:

For completeness, here are the headers:

Pallas is talking JSON to a web browser. Very nice.

We promised to tell you a bit about datacase and cog state, so let's do that next.

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