TypeScript Standard Endpoints

Declarative, strongly typed, reusable network definitions for networking libraries.

📖Read The Docs

Usage

1) Take any class and async functions

export class Todo {
  id = 0;
  userId = 0;
  title = '';
  completed = false;
}

export const getTodo = (id: string) =>
  fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/${id}`).then(res => res.json());

export const getTodoList = () =>
  fetch('https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos').then(res => res.json());

export const updateTodo = (id: string, body: Partial<Todo>) =>
  fetch(`https://jsonplaceholder.typicode.com/todos/${id}`, {
    method: 'PUT',
    body: JSON.stringify(body),
  }).then(res => res.json());

2) Turn them into Resources

import { EntityMixin, Endpoint } from '@data-client/endpoint';
import { Todo, getTodoList, updateTodo } from './existing';

export const TodoEntity = EntityMixin(Todo, { key: 'Todo' });

export const TodoResource = {
  get: new Endpoint(getTodo, {
    schema: TodoEntity,
  }),
  getList: new Endpoint(getTodoList, {
    schema: [TodoEntity],
  }),
  update: new Endpoint(updateTodo, {
    schema: TodoEntity,
    sideEffect: true,
  }),
};

3) Reuse with different hooks

import { useSuspense, useController } from '@data-client/react';

function TodoEdit() {
  const todo = useSuspense(TodoResource.get, '5');
  const ctrl = useController();
  const updateTodo = (data) => ctrl.fetch(TodoResource.update, id, data);

  return <TodoForm todo={todo} onSubmit={updateTodo} />
}

4) Or call directly in node

const todo = await TodoResource.get('5')
console.log(todo);

Why

There is a distinction between

• What are networking API is
  • How to make a request, expected response fields, etc.
• How it is used
  • Binding data, polling, triggering imperative fetch, etc.

Thus, there are many benefits to creating a distinct seperation of concerns between these two concepts.

With TypeScript Standard Endpoints, we define a standard for declaring in TypeScript the definition of a networking API.

• Allows API authors to publish npm packages containing their API interfaces
• Definitions can be consumed by any supporting library, allowing easy consumption across libraries like Vue, React, Angular
• Writing codegen pipelines becomes much easier as the output is minimal
• Product developers can use the definitions in a multitude of contexts where behaviors vary
• Product developers can easily share code across platforms with distinct behaviors needs like React Native and React Web

What's in an Endpoint

• A function that resolves the results
• A function to uniquely store those results
• Optional: information about how to store the data in a normalized cache
• Optional: whether the request could have side effects - to prevent repeat calls

API

@data-client/endpoint defines a standard interface

interface EndpointInterface {
    (params?: any, body?: any): Promise<any>;
    key(parmas?: any): string;
    schema?: Readonly<S>;
    sideEffects?: true;
    // other optionals like 'optimistic'
}

as well as a helper class to make construction easier.

class Endpoint<F extends () => Promise<any>> {
  constructor(fetchFunction: F, options: EndpointOptions);

  key(...args: Parameters<F>): string;

  readonly sideEffect?: true;

  readonly schema?: Schema;

  fetch: F;

  extend(options: EndpointOptions): Endpoint;
}

export interface EndpointOptions extends EndpointExtraOptions {
  key?: (params: any) => string;
  sideEffect?: true | undefined;
  schema?: Schema;
}

EndpointOptions

key: (params) => string

Serializes the parameters. This is used to build a lookup key in global stores.

Default:

`${this.fetch.name} ${JSON.stringify(params)}`

sideEffect: true | undefined

Disallows usage in hooks like useSuspense() since they might call fetch an unpredictable number of times. Use this for APIs with mutation side-effects like update, create, deletes.

Defaults to undefined meaning no side effects.

schema: Schema

Declarative definition of where Entities appear in the fetch response.

Not providing this option means no entities will be extracted.

import { Entity } from '@data-client/normalizr';
import { Endpoint } from '@data-client/endpoint';

class User extends Entity {
  id = '';
  username = '';
}

const getUser = new Endpoint(
    ({ id }) ⇒ fetch(`/users/${id}`),
    { schema: User }
);

Endpoint

extend(EndpointOptions): Endpoint

Can be used to further customize the endpoint definition

const UserDetail = new Endpoint(({ id }) ⇒ fetch(`/users/${id}`));


const UserDetailNormalized = UserDetail.extend({ schema: User });

API

Networking definition: Endpoints