RESTFul Data
Last updated
Last updated
Out of the box, ColdBox gives you all the RESTFul capabilities you will need to create robust and scalable RESTFul services. Let's add some RESTFul capabilities to our contact listing we created in the previous section.
Tip: You can find much more information about building ColdBox RESTFul services in our
If you know beforehand what type of format you will be responding with, you can leverage ColdBox 5's auto-marshalling in your handlers. By default, ColdBox detects any return value from handlers and if they are complex it will convert them to JSON automatically for you:
That's it! ColdBox detects the array and automatically serializes it to JSON. Easy Peasy!
The request context object has a special function called renderData()
that can take any type of data and marshall it for you to other formats like xml, json, wddx, pdf, text, html
or your own type.
Tip: You can find more information at the API Docs for renderData()
here )
So let's open the handlers/contacts.cfc
and add to our current code:
We have added the following line:
This tells ColdBox to render the contacts data in 4 formats: xml, json, pdf and html. WOW! So how would you trigger each format? Via the URL of course.
ColdBox has the ability to detect formats via URL extensions or an incoming Accepts
header. If no extension is sent, then ColdBox attempts to determine the format by inspecting the Accepts
header. If we still can't figure out what format to choose, the default of html
is selected for you.
Tip: You can also avoid the extension and pass a URL argument called format
with the correct format type: ?format=json
.
Let's add a new route to our system that is more RESTFul than /contacts/index.json
. You will do so by leveraging the application's router found at config/Router.cfc
. Find the configure()
method and let's add a new route:
The route()
method allows you to register new URL patterns in your application and immediately route them to a target event. You can even give it a human readable name that can be later referenced in the buildLink()
method.
We have now created a new URL route called /api/contacts
that if detected will execute the contacts.index
event. Now reinit the application, why, well we changed the application router and we need the changes to take effect.
Tip: Every time you add new routes make sure you reinit the application: http://localhost:{port}/?fwreinit
.
You can now visit the new URL pattern and you have successfully built a RESTFul API for your contacts.
You can find much more about routing in our