Handling different types of JSON requests

[Myf White]

I'm using a javascript library which has two ways of sending POST requests

1. using javascripts FormData, content-type: multipart/form-data
   
2. or as JSON within the body, content-type: application/json
   

From the Mojolicious side they both work - I can get a parameter 'foo':

1. with $c->param('foo')
2. with $c->req->json->{foo}

From the javascript side there is no advantage to either way, they both work as needed. From the Mojolicious side, Is there any advantage to using either way?

The system is currently set up just for use by browser, but there is an idea to develop an API in the future; would that make either of the options more attractive?

Any advice on the "right" way to do this would be very much appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Myf White

Email: myfw...@gmail.com

[Dan Book]

JSON gives you the option to send more straightforward and possibly nested hashes and arrays. JSON body is a relatively common method of making API requests so there's no reason to avoid it really. The only benefit of multipart/form-data is that it's sent natively by HTML forms so doesn't require javascript (or some other language) to construct the request, but that's not really important for an API.

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[Myf White]

Perfect. Thanks Dan.

Kind Regards,
Myf White

Email: myfw...@gmail.com

[sri]

The only benefit of multipart/form-data is that it's sent natively by HTML forms so doesn't require javascript (or some other language) to construct the request, but that's not really important for an API.

There's also the advantage that we have validation for forms, but not JSON.

    http://mojolicious.org/perldoc/Mojolicious/Guides/Rendering#Form-validation

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sebastian 

[Joel Berger]

For validation of JSON apis there are external modules like https://metacpan.org/pod/Mojolicious::Plugin::OpenAPI

[Daniel Mantovani]

multipart/form-data also supports binary data natively (i.e. uploading files). You could use Base64 to convert the binary data, but it depends whether the overheads (33% on network and corresponding processing load) may be a problem or not for your particular case.

[Myf White]

Great. Thanks everyone.

Kind Regards,
Myf White

Phone: 0413 757 052
Email: myfw...@gmail.com

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[Jan Henning Thorsen]

If you think M::P::OpenAPI is too much, then you can use JSON::Validator instead. Check out these links:

https://metacpan.org/pod/JSON::Validator#SYNOPSIS

https://metacpan.org/source/JHTHORSEN/JSON-Validator-0.85/t/validate-json.t

[Myf White]

Thanks Jan,

I only just got around to looking up JSON::Validator... Nice! I think this will suit my needs for this project better than Mojolicious::Plugin::OpenAPI.

Kind Regards,
Myf White

Phone: 0413 757 052
Email: myfw...@gmail.com