RestExpress is a thin wrapper on the JBOSS Netty HTTP stack to provide a simple and easy way to create RESTful services in Java that support massive Internet Scale and performance.

Born to be simple, only three things are required to wire up a service:

The main class which utilizes the RestExpress DSL to create a server instance.
A RouteDeclaration extender (much like routes.rb in a Rails app), which uses a DSL for the declaration of supported URLs and HTTP methods of the service(s) in its defineRoutes() method.
Service implementation(s), which is/are a simple POJO--no interface or super class implementation.

See: examples/kickstart directory to get started (there is a README there).

RestExpress supports both JSEND-style and raw responses. Meaning that it can wrap responses so AJAX clients can always process the responses easily. Or it can simply marshal the service return value directly into JSON or XML. For more information on JSEND-style responses, see: http://labs.omniti.com/labs/jsend

Maven Usage

Stable:

		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.strategicgains</groupId>
			<artifactId>RestExpress</artifactId>
			<version>0.9.4</version>
		</dependency>

Development:

		<dependency>
			<groupId>com.strategicgains</groupId>
			<artifactId>RestExpress</artifactId>
			<version>0.9.5-SNAPSHOT</version>
		</dependency>

Or download the jar directly from: http://search.maven.org/#search%7Cga%7C1%7Ca%3A%22RestExpress%22

Note that to use the SNAPSHOT version, you must enable snapshots and a repository in your pom file as follows:

  <profiles>
    <profile>
       <id>allow-snapshots</id>
          <activation><activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault></activation>
       <repositories>
         <repository>
           <id>snapshots-repo</id>
           <url>https://oss.sonatype.org/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
           <releases><enabled>false</enabled></releases>
           <snapshots><enabled>true</enabled></snapshots>
         </repository>
       </repositories>
     </profile>
  </profiles>

===================================================================================================

A quick tutorial:

Please see the Kickstart application in examples/kickstart for a complete, running example.

HTTP Methods, if not changed in the fluent (DSL) interface, map to the following:
- GET --> read(Request, Response)
- PUT --> update(Request, Response)
- POST --> create(Request, Response)
- DELETE --> delete(Request, Response)
You can choose to return objects from the methods, if desired, which will be returned to the client in the body of the response. The object will be marshaled into JSON or XML, depending on the default or based on the format in the request (e.g. '.xml' or '?format=xml').
If you choose to not return a value from the method (void methods) and using raw responses, then call response.setResponseNoContent() before returning to set the response HTTP status code to 204 (no content). Wrapped responses (JSEND style) are the default. So if you're using wrapped responses, there will always be a response returned to the client--therefore, you don't need to set the response.setResponseNoContent(). Just return your objects--or not. RestExpress will handle things on your behalf!
On successful creation, call response.setResponseCreated() to set the returning HTTP status code to 201.
For more real-world examples, see the examples/ directory which contains additional projects that setup RestExpress services. Simply do 'ant run' to run them. Then to see what's available perform a GET on the route: '/routes/metadata' to get a list of all the routes (or endpoints) available (e.g. localhost:8000/routes/metadata in the browser).

=================================================================================================== Change History/Release Notes:

Release 0.10.0 - SNAPSHOT (in branch 'master')

** Breaking Change ** Re-added GSON capability from version 0.8.2, making things a little more pluggable with RestExpress.setSerializationProvider(SerializationProvider). DefaultSerializationProvider is the default. GsonSerializationProvider is also available, but requires adding GSON to your pom file. Must refactor your own custom ResponseProcessor class into a SerializationProvider implementor.
** Breaking Change ** Removed RestExpress.putResponseProcessor(), .supportJson(), .supportXml(), .supportTxt(), .noJson(), .noXml(), noTxt() as this is all implemented in the SerializationProvider.
Implemented content-type negotiation using Content-Type header for serialization (e.g. Request.getBodyAs(type)) and Accept header for deserialization. Implementation still favors .{format}, but uses content-type negotiation if format not supplied.

Release 0.9.4 - 17 Jul 2013

Fixed issue for plugins that are dependent on RouteMetadata. Fixed issue with routes that depend on GET, PUT, POST, DELETE as the default--wasn't generating metadata correctly for that corner case.
Fixed issue with RouteBuilder metadata generation where it wouldn't include the defaults if none set on route.
Updated javadoc for getFullPattern() and getPattern().
Changed Route.getBaseUrl() to perform null check to avoid getting 'null' string in value.
Combined RestExpress-Common as a sub-module and moved core RestExpress functionality to the 'core' sub-module.

Release 0.9.3 - 14 Jun 2013

Fixed issue with setter getting called in deserialization instead of Jackson deserializer.
Removed LogLevel enumeration due to lack of use.
Fixed issue #61 - Large Chunked Request Causes Errors. Added HttpChunkAggregator to the pipeline.
Added RestExpress.setMaxContentSize(int) to allow limiting of total content length of requests even if chunked. Default max content size is 25K.
Added RestExpress.iterateRouteBuilders(Callback callback) to facilitate plugins, etc. augmenting or extracting information from the declared routes.

Release 0.9.2 - 27 Mar 2013

DEPRECATED: Request.getUrlDecodedHeader() and Request.getRawHeader() in favor of getHeader(). Since all HTTP headers and query-string parameters are URL decoded before being put on the Request object, these methods are redundant and cause problems. Their functionality was also changed to simply call getHeader()--so no URL decoding is done in getUrlDecodedHeader().
Ensured that parameters extracted from the URL are decoded before setting them as headers on the Request. Now all headers are URL decoded before any call to Request.getHeader(String).
Added Request.getRemoteAddress(), which returns the remote address of the request originator.
Merged pull request (Issue #58) from amitkarmakar13: add List<String> getHeaders(String)
Removed '?' and '#' as valid path segment characters in UrlPattern to conform better with IETF RFC 3986, section 3.3-path. Made '{format}' a first-class element for matching URL route patterns (by using '{format}' instead of a regex to match).

Release 0.9.1 - 4 Mar 2013

BREAKING CHANGE: eliminated GSON. RestExpress now uses Jackson for JSON processing. The changes are localized to the 'serialization' package. Simply copy the ObjectIdDeserializer, ObjectIdSerializer and JsonSerializationProcessor from https://github.com/RestExpress/RestExpress-Scaffold/tree/master/mongodb/src/main/java/com/strategicgains/restexpress/scaffold/mongodb/serialization for MongoDB-based projects. Or just the JsonSerializationProcessor from https://github.com/RestExpress/RestExpress-Scaffold/tree/master/minimal/src/main/java/com/strategicgains/restexpress/scaffold/minimal/serialization for a minimal project.
BREAKING CHANGE: Removed Chunking and compression settings. RestExpress does not support chunking/streaming uploads. So the setting were superfluous. The facility is still there to support streaming downloads, however, and these will be chunked as necessary. As compression is based on the Accept header, support is always provided--settings are superfluous. NOTE: streaming downloads are not fully implemented yet.
BREAKING CHANGE: Removed LoggingHandler from the Netty pipeline and related setter methods.
Added HttpBasicAuthenticationPreprocessor to facilitate HTTP Basic Authentication. Added Flags.Auth.PUBLIC_ROUTE, NO_AUTHENTICATION, and NO_AUTHORIZATION to support configuration of HttpBasicAuthenticationPreprocessor (and other authentication/authorization related routes).

Release 0.8.2 - 19 Feb 2013

Fixed issue in Request.parseQueryString() to URL decode query-string parameters before putting them in the Request header.

Release 0.8.1 - 16 Jan 2013

Removed Ant-build artifacts.
Extracted Query-related classes into RestExpress-Common.
Fixed maven compile plugin to generate Java target and source for 1.6
Updated Netty dependency to 3.6.2.Final
Removed dependency on HyperExpress.

Release 0.8.0 - 09 Jan 2013

Pushed to Maven Central repository.
Introduced maven build.
Merged pull request #49 - Added method to get all headers from a HttpRequest.
Fixed issue #40 (RestExpress#40).
Introduced route 'aliases' where there are multiple URLs for a given service.
Introduced concept of "finally" processors, which are executed in the finally block of DefaultRequestHandler and all of them are executed even if an exception is thrown within one of them. This enable the CorsHeaderPlugin to set the appropriate header even on not found errors, etc.
Changed to support multiple response types with wrapping or not, etc. Now can support wrapped JSON (.wjson) and XML (.wxml) as well as un-wrapped JSON (.json) and XML (.xml) depending on the format specifier.
Now throws BadRequestException (400) if the specified format (e.f. .json) isn't supported by the service suite.
Now throws MethodNotAllowedException (405) if the requested URL matches a route but not for the requested HTTP method. Sets the HTTP Allow header to a comma-delimited list of accepted methods.
Removed StringUtils.parseQueryString() as it was previously deprecated--use QueryStringParser.
Introduced String.join() methods (2).
Removed JSONP handling, favoring use of CORS instead, introducing CorsHeaderPlugin and corresponding post-processor.
Wraps ETAG header in quotes.
Renamed QueryRange.stop to QueryRange.limit.
Removed need for RouteDefinition class, moving that functionality into the RestExpress builder.
Changed example apps to reflect above elimination of RouteDefinition class.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.7.4 - 30 Nov 2012 (branch 'v0.7.4')

Patch release to allow period ('.') as a valid character within URL parameters. Note that this now allows a period to be the last character on the URL whether there is a format-specifier parameter declared for that route, or not. Also, if the route supports the format specifier and there is a period in the last parameter of the URL, anything after the last period will be used as the format for the request--which may NOT be what you want. -- /foo/todd.fredrich --> /foo/{p1}.{format} will use 'fredrich' as the format -- /foo/todd.fredrich.json --> /foo/{p1}.{format} will use 'json' as the format -- /foo/todd. --> /foo/{p1}.{format} will contain 'todd.' for the value of p1 -- /foo/todd. --> /foo/{p1} will contain 'todd.' for the value of p1

=================================================================================================== Release 0.7.3 - 12 July 2012 (branch 'v0.7.3')

Patch release to fix an issue with i18n. Fixed issue with DefaultJsonProcessor.deserialize(ChannelBuffer, Class) where underlying InputStreamReader was not UTF-8.

================================================================================================== Release 0.7.2 - 14 May 2012

Introduced ExecutionHandler with configuration via RestExpress.setExecutorThreadCount(int) to off-load long-running requests from the NIO workers into a separate thread pool.
Introduced CacheControlPlugin which leverages CacheHeaderPostprocessor, DateHeaderPostprocessor and EtagHeaderPostprocessor to respond to GET requests.
Introduced EtagHeaderPostprocessor which adds ETag header in response to GET requests.
Introduced DateHeaderPostprocessor which adds a Date header to responses to GET requests.
Introduced CacheHeaderPostprocessor which support Cache-Control and other caching-related response header best-practices by setting Parameters.Cache.MAX_AGE or Flags.Cache.DONT_CACHE on a route.
Changed to use QueryStringParser over StringUtils for query-string and QueryStringDecoder for body parsing. This mitigates HashDoS attacks, since the query-string is parsed before a request is accepted.
Deprecated StringUtils in favor of using Netty's QueryStringDecoder or RestExpress's QueryStringParser.
Refactored so SerializationProcessor.resolve(Request) is only called once at the end of the request cycle (performance enhancement).

=================================================================================================== Release 0.7.1 - 20 Sep 2011

Added rootCause to ResultWrapper data area.
Exposed the XStream object from DefaultXmlProcessor.
Renamed Link to XLink.
Renamed LinkUtils to XLinkUtils, adding asXLinks() method that utilizes XLinkFactory callback to create the XLink instances.
Changed URL Matching to support additional characters: '[', ']', '&' which more closely follows W3C the specification.
Added ability to return query string parameters as a Map from the Request.
Introduced Request.getBaseUrl() which returns protocol and host, without URL path information.
Introduced query criteria capability: filter, order, range (for pagination).
Introduced the concept of Plugins.
Refactored the console routes to use the new plugin concept.
Updated Netty jars (to 3.2.5).
Added ability to set the number of worker threads via call to RestExpress.setWorkerThreadCount() before calling bind().

=================================================================================================== Release 0.7.0

Added gzip request/response handling. On by default. Disable it via call to RestExpress.noCompression() and supportCompression().
Added chunked message handling. On by default. Chunking settings are managed via RestExpress.noChunkingSupport(), supportChunking(), and setMaxChunkSize(int).

=================================================================================================== Release 0.6.1.1 - 31 Mar 2011

Bug fix to patch erroneously writing to already closed channel in DefaultRequestHandler.exceptionCaught().

=================================================================================================== Release 0.6.1 - 30 Mar 2011

Stability release.
Fixed issue when unable to URL Decode query string parameters or URL.
Introduced SerializationResolver that defines a getDefault() method. Implemented SerializationResolver in DefaultSerializationResolver.
Changed UrlPattern to match format based on non-whitespace vs. word characters.
Refactored Request.getHeader() into getRawHeader(String) and getUrlDecodedHeader(String), along with corresponding getRawHeader(String,String) and getUrlDecodedHeader(String,String).
Renamed realMethod property to effectiveHttpMethod, along with appropriate accessor/mutator.
Removed Request from Response constructor signature.
Added FieldNamingPolicy to DefaultJsonProcessor (using LOWER_CASE_WITH_UNDERSCORES).
getUrlDecodedHeader(String) throws BadRequestException if URL decoding fails.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.6.0.2 - 21 Mar 2011

Fixed issue with 'connection reset by peer' causing unresponsive behavior.
Utilized Netty logging behavior to add logging capabilities to RestExpress.
Made socket-level settings externally configurable: tcpNoDelay, KeepAlive, reuseAddress, soLinger, connectTimeoutMillis, receiveBufferSize.
Merged in 0.5.6.1 path release changes.
Added enforcement of some HTTP 1.1 specification rules: Content-Type, Content-Length and body content for 1xx, 204, 304 are not allow. Now throws HttpSpecificationException if spec. is not honored.
Added ability to add 'flags' and 'parameters' to routes, in that, uri().flag("name") on Route makes test request.isFlagged("name") return true. Also, uri().parameter("name", "value") makes request.getParamater("name") return "value". Not returned/marshaled in the response. Useful for setting internal values/flags for preprocessors, controllers, etc.
Added .useRawResponse() and .useWrappedResponse() to fluent route DSL. Causes that particular route to wrap the response or not, independent of global response wrap settings.
Parameters parsed from the URL and query string arguments are URL decoded before being placed as Request headers.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.6.0.1

Issue #7 - Fixed issue with invalid URL requested where serialization always occurred to the default (JSON). Now serializes to the requested format, if applicable.
Issue #11 - Feature enhancement for Kickstart. Now utilizes Rails-inspired configuration environements (e.g. dev, testing, prod, etc.).
Issue #12 - Parse URL parameter names out of the URL pattern and include them in the route metadata output.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.6.0

Routes now defined in descendant of RouteDeclaration.
Refactored everything into RestExpress object, using builder pattern for configuration.
Implemented RestExpress DSL to declare REST server in main().
Added supported formats and default format to RouteBuilder.
Added JSEND-style response wrapping (now default). Call RestExpress.useWrappedResponses() to use.
Add ability to support raw response return. Call RestExpress.useRawResponses() to use.
Implemented /console/routes.{format} route which return metadata about the routes in this service suite. To use, call RestExpress.supportConsoleRoutes().
Exceptions occurring now return in the requested format with the message wrapped and using the appropriate mime type (e.g. application/json or application/xml).
Kickstart application has complete build with 'dist' target that builds a runnable jar file and 'run' target that will run the services from the command line.
Kickstart application now handles JVM shutdown correctly using JVM shutdown hooks. The method RestExpress.awaitShutdown() uses the DefaultShutdownHook class. RestExpress.shutdown() allows programs to use their own shutdown hooks, calling RestExpress.shutdown() upon shudown to release all resource.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.6.1 - 11 Mar 2011

Patch release to fix issue with HTTP response status of 204 (No Content) and 304 (Not Modified) where they would return a body of an empty string and content length of 2 ('\r\n'). No longer serializes for 204 or 304. Also no longer serializes for null body response unless a JSONP header is passed in on the query string.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.6 - 18 Jan 2011

Upgraded to Netty 3.2.3 final.
Added getProtocol(), getHost(), getPath() to Request
Functionality of getUrl() is now getPath() and getUrl() now returns the entire URL string, including protocol, host and port, and path.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.5

Added regex URL matching with RouteMapping.regex(String) method.
Refactored Route into an abstract class, moving previous functionality into ParameterizedRoute.
Added KickStart release artifact to get projects going quickly--simply unzip the kickstart file.
Added SimpleMessageObserver which performs simple timings and outputs to System.out.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.4

Added alias() capability to DefaultTxtProcessor to facilitate custom text serialization.
Updated kickstart application to illustrate latest features.
Minor refactoring of constants and their locations (moved to RestExpress.java).

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.3

Fixed issue with JSON date/timestamp parsing.
Fixed issues with XML date/timestamp parsing.
Upgraded to GSON 1.6 release.
Added correlation ID to Request to facilitate timing, etc. in pipeline.
Added alias(String, Class) to DefaultXmlProcessor.
By default, alias List and Link in DefaultXmlProcessor.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.2

Introduced DateJsonProcessor (sibling to DefaultJsonProcessor) which parses dates vs. time points.
Refactored ExceptionMapping.getExceptionFor() signature from Exception to Throwable.
Introduced MessageObserver, which accepts notifications of onReceived(), onSuccess(), onException(), onComplete() to facilitate logging, auditing, timing, etc.
Changed RouteResolver.resolve() to throw NotFoundException instead of BadRequestException for unresolvable URI.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5.1

Enhanced support for mark, unreserved and some reserved characters in URL. Specifically, added $-+*()~:!' and %. Still doesn't parse URLs with '.' within the string itself--because of the support for .{format} URL section.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.5

Renamed repository from RestX to RestExpress.
Repackaged everything from com.strategicgains.restx... to com.strategicgains.restexpress...
Changed DefaultHttpResponseWriter to output resonse headers correctly.
Updated javadoc on RouteBuilder to provide some documentation on route DSL.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.4

Fixed error in "Connection: keep-alive" processing during normal and error response writing.
Can now create route mappings for OPTIONS and HEAD http methods.
Added decoding to URL when Request is constructed.
Improved pre-processor implementation, including access to resolved route in request.
Better null handling here and there to avoid NullPointerException, including serialization resolver.
Improved UT coverage.
KickStart application builds and is a more accurate template.

=================================================================================================== Release 0.3

Added support for "method tunneling" in POST via query string parameter (e.g. _method=PUT or _method=DELETE)
Added JSONP support. Use jsonp=<method_name> in query string.
Utilized Builder pattern in DefaultPipelineFactory, which is now PipelineBuilder.
Externalized DefaultRequestHandler in PipelineBuilder and now supports pre/post processors (with associated interfaces).

Jsalim / RestExpress