Working with XML and JSON

This guide showcases services publishing a mix of XML and JSON, how to combine them, and expose the composed services as a REST API.

It shows starting an Orbital project from scratch, so if you’re unfamiliar with Orbital, this is the perfect starting point.

This demo has a video walkthrough, talking about how it’s built:

​

Overview

This guide shows connecting:

// A service the returns a list of Films (in XML)
operation findAllFilms():FilmList

// A service that returns the cast of a film (in XML)
operation findCast(FilmId):ActorList

// A service that returns the list of awards a film has won (in JSON)
operation findAwards(FilmId):Award[]

The services in our demo

We’ll stitch these together, and expose a REST API that returns the data from all 3 services.

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Setting Up

Jump to this section of the video

To get started, install Taxi using SDKMan, and create a new project:

sdk install taxi
taxi init
# follow prompts to create your taxi project

Then launch an Orbital developer environment.

taxi orbital

This downloads a docker-compose file which configures a local developer environment of Orbital, which live-reloads your Taxi project changes.

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Describing the Film Service

Jump to this section of the video

Write some Taxi that describes our Film service.

  import com.orbitalhq.formats.Xml

// The @Xml annotation tells Orbital how to read this object
@Xml
model FilmList {
  item : Film[]
}

model Film {
  id : FilmId inherits Int
  title : FilmTitle inherits String
  yearReleased : YearReleased inherits Int
}

service FilmsService {
  @HttpOperation(url = "http://localhost:8044/films", method = "GET")
  operation getAllFilms():FilmList
}

  <List>
    <item id="0">
      <title>ACADEMY DINOSAUR</title>
      <yearReleased>2005</yearReleased>
    </item>
    <item id="1">
      <title>ACE GOLDFINGER</title>
      <yearReleased>1975</yearReleased>
    </item>
  </List>

​

Integrating the Cast Service

Our CastService takes a the Id of a Film, and returns a list of Actors:

import com.orbitalhq.formats.Xml

@Xml
model ActorList {
    item : Actor[]
}

model Actor {
    id : ActorId inherits Int
    name : ActorName inherits String
}

service CastService {
    @HttpOperation(url = "http://localhost:8044/film/{filmId}/cast", method = "GET")
    operation fetchCastForFilm(@PathVariable("filmId") filmId : FilmId):ActorList
}

<List>
  <item>
      <id>34</id>
      <name>JUDY DEAN</name>
  </item>
  <item>
      <id>21</id>
      <name>ELVIS MARX</name>
  </item>
</List>

​

What connects it together

Orbital now has enough information to link our services together:

// The FilmId from our Film model...
model Film {
  id : FilmId inherits Int
  ...
}
// ... is used as an input to our fetchCastForFilm operation:
operation fetchCastForFilm(FilmId):ActorList

We don’t need to write any integration code, or resolvers. There’s enough information in the schemas.

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Writing Data Queries

Jump to this section of the video

Orbital uses type metadata to understand how to link things together. Rather than writing integration code, we write a query for data using TaxiQL.

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Fetch the list of films

// Just fetch the ActorList
find { FilmList }

Which returns:

{
   "item": [
      {
         "id": 0,
         "title": "ACADEMY DINOSAUR",
         "yearReleased": 2005
      },
      {
         "id": 1,
         "title": "ACE GOLDFINGER",
         "yearReleased": 1975
      },
      // snip
   ]
}

​

Restructure the result

We’d like to remove the item wrapper (which is carried over from the XML format), so we change the query, to ask just for a Film[]

find { FilmList } as Film[]

Which returns:

[
  {
   "id": 0,
   "title": "ACADEMY DINOSAUR",
   "yearReleased": 2005
  },
  {
   "id": 1,
   "title": "ACE GOLDFINGER",
   "yearReleased": 1975
  }
]

​

Defining a custom response object

We can define a data contract of the exact data we want back, specifying the field names we like, with the data type indicating where the data is sourced from:

find { FilmList } as (Film[]) -> {
    filmId : FilmId
    nameOfFilm : FilmTitle
}

​

Linking our actor service

To include data from our CastService, we just ask for the actor information:

find { FilmList } as (Film[]) -> {
    filmId : FilmId
    nameOfFilm : FilmTitle
    cast : Actor[]
}

Which now gives us:

{
   "filmId": 0,
   "nameOfFilm": "ACADEMY DINOSAUR",
   "cast": [
      {
         "id": 18,
         "name": "BOB FAWCETT"
      },
      {
         "id": 28,
         "name": "ALEC WAYNE"
      },
    //..snip
   ]
}

​

Adding our Awards service

We can also define a schema and service for our Awards information, which is returned in JSON:

model Award {
    title : AwardTitle inherits String
    yearWon : YearWon inherits Int
}

service AwardsService {
    @HttpOperation(url = "http://localhost:8044/film/{filmId}/awards", method = "GET")
    operation fetchAwardsForFilm(@PathVariable("filmId") filmId : FilmId):Award[]
}

[
  {
      "title": "Best Makeup and Hairstyling",
      "yearWon": 2020
  },
  {
      "title": "Best Original Score",
      "yearWon": 2020
  },
  // snip...
]

​

Enriching our query

Finally, to include this awards data, we just add it to our query:

find { FilmList } as (Film[]) -> {
    filmId : FilmId
    nameOfFilm : FilmTitle
    cast : Actor[]
    awards : Award[]
}

Which gives us:

{
   "filmId": 0,
   "nameOfFilm": "ACADEMY DINOSAUR",
   "cast" : [] // omitted
   "awards": [
      {
         "title": "Best Documentary Feature",
         "yearWon": 2020
      },
      {
         "title": "Best Supporting Actress",
         "yearWon": 2020
      },
   ]
}         

​

Publishing our Query as REST API

Now that we’re happy with our response data, we can publish this query as a REST API.

• First, we wrap the query in a query { ... } block, and save it in our taxi project
• Then we add an @HttpOperation(...) annotation.

@HttpOperation(url = '/api/q/filmsAndAwards', method = 'GET')
query filmsAndAwards {
   find { FilmList } as (Film[]) -> {
       filmId : FilmId
       nameOfFilm : FilmTitle
       awards : Award[]
       cast : Actor[]
   }[]
}

Our query is now available at http://localhost:9022/api/q/filmsAndAwards

$ curl http://localhost:9022/api/q/filmsAndAwards | jq

Gives us:

[
  {
    "filmId": 0,
    "nameOfFilm": "ACADEMY DINOSAUR",
    "awards": [
      {
        "title": "Best Animated Feature",
        "yearWon": 2020
      },
      {
        "title": "Best Original Score for a Comedy",
        "yearWon": 2020
      },
      {
        "title": "Best Documentary Feature",
        "yearWon": 2020
      },
      // .... snip
    ]
  }
]

​

Wrapping Up and Next Steps

Throughout this guide, we’ve:

• Created a Taxi project

• Exposed XML services, and modelled their responses

• Written a query stitching three services together

• Published that query as an HTTP service

  The code for this guide is available on Github.

  Remember, if you haven’t done so, head to the Orbital github repo, and give us a Star!