doc.go

/*
Package goa provides the runtime support for goa microservices.

Code Generation

goa service development begins with writing the *design* of a service. The design is described using
the goa language implemented by the github.com/goadesign/goa/design/apidsl package. The `goagen` tool
consumes the metadata produced from executing the design language to generate service specific code
that glues the underlying HTTP server with action specific code and data structures.

The goa package contains supporting functionality for the generated code including basic request
and response state management through the RequestData and ResponseData structs, error handling via
error classes, middleware support via the Middleware data structure as well as decoding and
encoding algorithms.

Request Context

The RequestData and ResponseData structs provides access to the request and response state. goa request
handlers also accept a golang.org/x/net/Context interface as first parameter so that deadlines and
cancelation signals may easily be implemented.

The request state exposes the underlying http.Request object as well as the deserialized payload (request
body) and parameters (both path and querystring parameters). Generated action specific contexts wrap
the context.Context, ResponseData and RequestData data structures. They expose properly typed fields
that correspond to the request parameters and body data structure descriptions appearing in the design.

The response state exposes  the response status and body length as well as the underlying ResponseWriter.
Action contexts provide action specific helper methods that write the responses as described in the
design optionally taking an instance of the media type for responses that contain a body.

Here is an example showing an "update" action corresponding to following design (extract):

    Resource("bottle", func() {
        DefaultMedia(Bottle)
        Action("update", func() {
            Params(func() {
                Param("bottleID", Integer)
            })
            Payload(UpdateBottlePayload)
            Response(OK)
            Response(NotFound)
        })
    })

The action signature generated by goagen is:

    type BottleController interface {
        goa.Controller
        Update(*UpdateBottleContext) error
    }

where UpdateBottleContext is:

    type UpdateBottleContext struct {
        context.Context      // Timeout and deadline support
        *goa.ResponseData    // Response state access
        *goa.RequestData     // Request state access
        Service *goa.Service // Service handling request
        BottleID  int        // Properly typed parameter fields
        Payload   *UpdateBottlePayload // Properly typed payload
    }

and implements:

    func (ctx *UpdateBottleContext) OK(resp *Bottle) error
    func (ctx *UpdateBottleContext) NotFound() error

The definitions of the Bottle and UpdateBottlePayload data structures are ommitted for brievity.

Controllers

There is one controller interface generated per resource defined via the design language. The
interface exposes the controller actions. User code must provide data structures that implement these
interfaces when mounting a controller onto a service. The controller data structure should include
an anonymous field of type *goa.Controller which takes care of implementing the middleware handling.

Middleware

A goa middleware is a function that takes and returns a Handler. A Handler is a the low level
function which handles incoming HTTP requests. goagen generates the handlers code so each handler
creates the action specific context and calls the controller action with it.

Middleware can be added to a goa service or a specific controller using the corresponding Use
methods. goa comes with a few stock middleware that handle common needs such as logging, panic
recovery or using the RequestID header to trace requests across multiple services.

Error Handling

The controller action methods generated by goagen such as the Update method of the BottleController
interface shown above all return an error value. goa defines an Error struct that action
implementations can use to describe the content of the corresponding HTTP response. Errors can be
created using error classes which are functions created via NewErrorClass.

The ErrorHandler middleware maps errors to HTTP responses. Errors that are instances of the Error
struct are mapped using the struct fields while other types of errors return responses with status
code 500 and the error message in the body.

Validation

The goa design language documented in the dsl package makes it possible to attach validations to
data structure definitions. One specific type of validation consists of defining the format that a
data structure string field must follow. Example of formats include email, data time, hostnames etc.
The ValidateFormat function provides the implementation for the format validation invoked from the
code generated by goagen.

Encoding

The goa design language makes it possible to specify the encodings supported by the API both as
input (Consumes) and output (Produces). goagen uses that information to registed the corresponding
packages with the service encoders and decoders via their Register methods. The service exposes the
DecodeRequest and EncodeResponse that implement a simple content type negotiation algorithm for
picking the right encoder for the "Content-Type" (decoder) or "Accept" (encoder) request header.
*/
package goa