Response API

The response API allows your application to return data to the outside world. Since every endpoint must return a response, the API is designed to be very concise. However, applications will have extemely variable requirements for Response structure, so the API also allows a great deal of flexibility. In addition to this, Responses must be easy to use in unit tests.

The main class that applications will interact with is the Reponse class. To the user, Response is a Plain Old Java Object. Response is immutable and method calls have no side effects. In addition to Response, applications will interact with instances of the ResponseDecorator functional interface. the Response#with method provides a fluent API for adding decorators to the Response object. This is the primary way to build custom responses.

Lighter also provides the Responses static factory class with utility methods for constructing common HTTP response types. Responses has methods for constructing 3xx - Redirect, JSON content, and no content responses.

The Response API is type safe. The Response class type parameter is used to represent the type of the response body content. ResponseDecorator application can change the type parameter. This allows chains of decorator application to maintain type safety. java.lang.Void is used to represent an empty response.

Using Response

The Response class does not contain the serialized data. Instead, it contains a reference to the Java object that will be serialized. Lighter uses the top level TypeAdapterFactory to serialize the content. Lighter ensures that the type is serialized with the correct MIME Media Type by reading the Content-Type header on the response.

When using the Response for unit testing endpoints, the Java object is directly available.

Standard Response Decorators

Lighter provides a few standard response decorators. These allow most required responses to be constructed. Since ResponseDecorator is a functional interface, lambda functions can also be used.

The provided decorators are:

• HeaderResponse - adds a header to the response
• StatusResponse - sets the response status code
• JsonContent - adds an object as the response body and sets the content-type header to application/json