DropWizard uses Jersey under the hood for REST. I am trying to figure out how to write a client for the RESTful endpoints my DropWizard app will expose.
For the sake of this example, let's say my DropWizard app has a CarResource, which exposes a few simple RESTful endpoints for CRUDding cars:
@Path("/cars")
public class CarResource extends Resource {
// CRUDs car instances to some database (DAO).
public CardDao carDao = new CarDao();
@POST
public Car createCar(String make, String model, String rgbColor) {
Car car = new Car(make, model, rgbColor);
carDao.saveCar(car);
return car;
}
@GET
@Path("/make/{make}")
public List<Car> getCarsByMake(String make) {
List<Car> cars = carDao.getCarsByMake(make);
return cars;
}
}
So I would imagine that a structured API client would be something like a CarServiceClient:
// Packaged up in a JAR library. Can be used by any Java executable to hit the Car Service
// endpoints.
public class CarServiceClient {
public HttpClient httpClient;
public Car createCar(String make, String model, String rgbColor) {
// Use 'httpClient' to make an HTTP POST to the /cars endpoint.
// Needs to deserialize JSON returned from server into a `Car` instance.
// But also needs to handle if the server threw a `WebApplicationException` or
// returned a NULL.
}
public List<Car> getCarsByMake(String make) {
// Use 'httpClient' to make an HTTP GET to the /cars/make/{make} endpoint.
// Needs to deserialize JSON returned from server into a list of `Car` instances.
// But also needs to handle if the server threw a `WebApplicationException` or
// returned a NULL.
}
}
But the only two official references to Drop Wizard clients I can find are totally contradictory to one another:
- DropWizard recommended project structure - which claims I should put my client code in a
car-clientproject undercar.service.clientpackage; but then... - DropWizard Client manual - which makes it seem like a "DropWizard Client" is meant for integrating my DropWizard app with other RESTful web services (thus acting as a middleman).
So I ask, what is the standard way of writing Java API clients for your DropWizard web services? Does DropWizard have a client-library I can utilize for this type of use case? Am I supposed to be implementing the client via some Jersey client API? Can someone add pseudo-code to my CarServiceClient so I can understand how this would work?
