Goat

Goat is a minimalistic REST API server in Go. You can pronounce it like the goat, or go-at. Depends on how you like goats.

Contents

• Usage
  • Parameters
  • Subrouters
  • Indices
  • Middleware
• Philosophy
• Fedback
• Credits
• License

Usage

Parameters

You can use named parameters and access them through goat.Params, wich you can treat as any map[string]string.

package main

import (
    "net/http"

    "github.com/bahlo/goat"
)

func helloHandler(w http.ResponseWriter, r *http.Request, p goat.Params) {
    goat.WriteJSON(w, map[string]string{
        "hello": p["name"],
    })
}

func main() {
    r := goat.New()

    r.Get("/hello/:name", "hello_url", helloHandler)

    r.Run(":8080")
}

Subrouters

You can create subrouters to simplify your code

func main() {
    r := goat.New()

    r.Get("/hello/:name", "hello_url", helloHandler)

    sr := r.Subrouter("/user")
    {
        sr.Post("/login", "user_login_url", loginHandler)
        sr.Get("/logout", "user_logout_url", logoutHandler)
    }

    r.Run(":8080")
}

Indices

Every route can have a description (like user_login_url). These can be used to automagically generate an API index (like this). If you want to hide specific methods, just provide an empty string.

func main() {
    r := goat.New()

    r.Get("/", "", r.IndexHandler)
    r.Get("/hello/:name", "hello_url", helloHandler)

    sr := r.Subrouter("/user")
    {
        sr.Post("/login", "user_login_url", loginHandler)
        sr.Get("/logout", "user_logout_url", logoutHandler)
    }

    r.Run(":8080")
}

The above example would return the following response on /:

{
  "hello_url": "/hello/:name",
  "user_logout_url": "/user/logout"
}

Note: Indices are only supported for GET requests. Open an issue, if you want them on other methods, too

Middleware

You can easily include any middleware you like. A great guide to middleware is found here. Important is, that it's in the following format:

func(http.Handler) http.Handler

Example:

func main() {
    r := goat.New()

    r.Get("/hello/:name", "hello_url", helloHandler)
    r.Use(loggerMiddleware, gzipMiddleware)

    r.Run(":8080")
}

Wrapping middleware

Sometimes middleware isn't in the required format, so you have to build a wrapper around it. This example shows a wrapper around handlers.CombinedLoggingHandler from the Gorilla handlers:

func loggerMiddleware(h http.Handler) http.Handler {
    // Create logfile (you should check for errors)
    f, _ := os.Create("api.log")
    return handlers.CombinedLoggingHandler(f, h)
}

You can now safely use the middleware in Goat:

func main() {
    r := goat.New()

    r.Get("/hello/:name", "hello_url", helloHandler)
    r.Use(loggerMiddleware)

    r.Run(":8080")
}

Philosophy

I wanted to create a small, fast and reliable REST API server, which supports quick JSON and error output, good rooting and easy-to-use middleware.

I have split the files after responsibility to make it easy for everyone to dive in (start with goat.go).

Feedback

If you have problems, feel free to create an issue or drop me an email at hallo@arne.me!

Credits

Thanks to Julien Schmidt for the amazing httprouter used in this project.

License

This project is licensed unter MIT, for more information look into the LICENSE file.