MockJSONAPI is a mock server for a generic JSON API built with Delphi and delphimvcframework. Can be used with any client technology and language. When mockjsonapi server receives a requests it matches the request against the data.json that have been configured.
If you are an experienced user, grab the latest binary release here otherwise, keep reading the docs.
Let's say that you need to develop a REST client (e.g. mobile app, web client, web SPA or a desktop thin client) and you need some endpoints to use. The usual problem in this case is that you need to start to develop the server before you can show something to the end user. MockJSONAPI server soves this problem giving to the developer a bare-bone REST server with the standard CRUD interface. The data are stored into a single JSON file.
The configuration of the server are really trivial. The data.json file contains all the data that will be served by the server. This is a sample data.json file:
{
"projects": [
{
"_oid": 1,
"department": "marketing",
"description": "Falcon Fly"
},
{
"_oid": 2,
"department": "R&D",
"description": "NextGen"
}
],
"departments": [],
"employee": []
}
MockJSONAPI server supports all the resources that you need. So you can ask to the API any resourceusing an HTTP GET. If that resource exists in the data.json file, then will be returned to the client, otherwise an empty array will be returned.
If you try to create a new entity under a specific resource, then that resource will be automaticaly created and stored in the file.
I strongly suggest to play with the server using curl or Postman. Just launch mockjsonapi.exe and follow the curl session below.
Here's a typical curl session which uses the mockjsonapi server.
Let's ask for a non existent resource.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XGET http://localhost:8080/api/customers
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 11
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:48:02 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
{"data":[]}
As expected, the api returns an empty array in data property (not an error, just an empty array).
Now, we try to get a specific entity from the resource, and we expect an error in this case.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XGET http://localhost:8080/api/customers/3
HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found
Connection: close
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 139
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:49:01 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
{"classname":"","detailedmessage":"","apperrorcode":0,"items":[],"statuscode":404,"reasonstring":"error","message":"Not Found","data":null}
Here's the error. All the errors are returned as json object.
Now we create an actual object into the resource. The resource will be created automatically.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XPOST http://localhost:8080/api/customers --data "{\"name\":\"Daniele Teti\"}"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 85
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:50:13 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
X-REF: /api/customers/61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96
Location: /api/customers/61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96
{"data":{"status":"ok","xref":"/api/customers/61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96"}}
The resource and the entity have been created. The entity is available for GET requests at the URL returned by the X-REF header. Let's try to retrieve the object just created.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XGET http://localhost:8080/api/customers/61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 69
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:51:13 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
{"name":"Daniele Teti","_oid":"61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96"}
Got It! Here's the JSON object just created. As you can see, MockJSONAPI server adds a standard _oid property as ObjectIdentitied that you can use to retrieve the object.
Let's create another entity.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XPOST http://localhost:8080/api/customers --data "{\"name\":\"Bruce Banner\"}"
HTTP/1.1 201 Created
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 85
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:51:53 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
X-REF: /api/customers/4F1EB312-AD4F-4EDA-9F64-4CACAAB798E3
Location: /api/customers/4F1EB312-AD4F-4EDA-9F64-4CACAAB798E3
{"data":{"status":"ok","xref":"/api/customers/4F1EB312-AD4F-4EDA-9F64-4CACAAB798E3"}}
To retrieve the full collection you can send a GET request to the resource without parameter, as following.
Daniele@DANIELETETI C:\Users\Daniele
$ curl -i -XGET http://localhost:8080/api/customers
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 150
Date: Mon, 09 Nov 2020 16:59:49 GMT
Server: DelphiMVCFramework
X-Powered-By: DMVCFramework 3.2.1 (carbon)
Access-Control-Allow-Origin: *
Access-Control-Allow-Methods: POST,GET,OPTIONS,PUT,DELETE
Access-Control-Allow-Headers: Content-Type, Accept, jwtusername, jwtpassword, authentication, authorization
Access-Control-Allow-Credentials: true
X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode = block
X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
X-MOCK-JSON-API: 1.1.0
{"data":[{"name":"Daniele Teti","_oid":"61616787-1F08-4187-ADBA-BCB8CA065E96"},{"name":"Bruce Banner","_oid":"4F1EB312-AD4F-4EDA-9F64-4CACAAB798E3"}]}
GET /api/resourcename
GET /api/resourcename/1
POST /api/resourcename
{...body...}
PUT /api/resourcename/1
{...body...}
DELETE /api/resourcename/1
DELETE /api/resourcename
Using MockJSONAPI Server is really siple. Just run the executable with the data.json file in the exe folder (the release already contains a sample data.json file). You are productive in seconds starting to use the Mock API. If you want to "load" data in the server storage, just change the data.json with your own data.