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JSON in API v1

JSON in API v1

DSP-API v1 parses and generates JSON using the spray-json library.

The triplestore returns results in JSON, and these are parsed into SparqlSelectResponse objects in the store package (by SparqlUtils, which can be used by any actor in that package). A SparqlSelectResponse has a structure that's very close to the JSON returned by a triplestore via the SPARQL 1.1 Protocol: it contains a header (listing the variables that were used in the query) and a body (containing rows of query results). Each row of query results is represented by a VariableResultsRow, which contains a Map[String, String] of variable names to values.

The Jsonable trait marks classes that can convert themselves into spray-json AST objects when you call their toJsValue method; it returns a JsValue object, which can then be converted to text by calling its prettyPrint or compactPrint methods. Case classes representing complete API responses extend the KnoraResponseV1 trait, which extends Jsonable. Case classes representing Knora values extend the ApiValueV1 trait, which also extends Jsonable. To make the responders reusable, the JSON for API responses is generated only at the last moment, by the RouteUtilV1.runJsonRoute() function.


Last update: January 19, 2023