I created an IDL to simplify the restful api development

1. Get started

• install goctl

  GO111MODULE=on go get -u github.com/tal-tech/go-zero/tools/goctl

• create the working dir shorturl and shorturl/api

• in shorturl dir, execute go mod init shorturl to initialize go.mod

2. Write code for API Gateway

• use goctl to generate api/shorturl.api

  goctl api -o shorturl.api

  for simplicity, the leading info block is removed, and the code looks like:

  type (
  	expandReq {
  		shorten string `form:"shorten"`
  	}
  
  	expandResp {
  		url string `json:"url"`
  	}
  )
  
  type (
  	shortenReq {
  		url string `form:"url"`
  	}
  
  	shortenResp {
  		shorten string `json:"shorten"`
  	}
  )
  
  service shorturl-api {
  	@server(
  		handler: ShortenHandler
  	)
  	get /shorten(shortenReq) returns(shortenResp)
  
  	@server(
  		handler: ExpandHandler
  	)
  	get /expand(expandReq) returns(expandResp)
  }

  the usage of type keyword is the same as that in go, service is used to define get/post/head/delete api requests, described below:

  • service shorturl-api { defines the service name
  • @server defines the properties that used in server side
  • handler defines the handler name
  • get /shorten(shortenReq) returns(shortenResp) defines this is a GET request, the request parameters, and the response parameters

• generate the code for API Gateway by using goctl

  goctl api go -api shorturl.api -dir .

  the generated file structure looks like:

  .
  ├── api
  │   ├── etc
  │   │   └── shorturl-api.yaml         // configuration file
  │   ├── internal
  │   │   ├── config
  │   │   │   └── config.go             // configuration definition
  │   │   ├── handler
  │   │   │   ├── expandhandler.go      // implements expandHandler
  │   │   │   ├── routes.go             // routes definition
  │   │   │   └── shortenhandler.go     // implements shortenHandler
  │   │   ├── logic
  │   │   │   ├── expandlogic.go        // implements ExpandLogic
  │   │   │   └── shortenlogic.go       // implements ShortenLogic
  │   │   ├── svc
  │   │   │   └── servicecontext.go     // defines ServiceContext
  │   │   └── types
  │   │       └── types.go              // defines request/response
  │   ├── shorturl.api
  │   └── shorturl.go                   // main entrance
  ├── go.mod
  └── go.sum
  

• start API Gateway service, listens on port 8888 by default

  go run shorturl.go -f etc/shorturl-api.yaml

• test API Gateway service

  curl -i "http://localhost:8888/shorten?url=http://www.google.com"

  response like:

  HTTP/1.1 200 OK
  Content-Type: application/json
  Date: Thu, 27 Aug 2020 14:31:39 GMT
  Content-Length: 15
  
  {"shortUrl":""}

  You can see that the API Gateway service did nothing except returned a zero value.

• you can modify internal/svc/servicecontext.go to pass dependencies if needed

• implement logic in package internal/logic

• you can use goctl to generate code for clients base on the .api file

• till now, the client engineer can work with the api, don’t need to wait for the implementation of server side

3. more info about goctl

goctl is a builtin tool in https://github.com/tal-tech/go-zero. Check out for more info.