jsonrpc

Standards-compliant JSON-RPC 2.0 over HTTP for Go.

How to use

Create a new Handler and register methods to it. A method is any Go function with certain restrictions:

• The method may contain a context.Context as its first argument.
• The method must only have JSON-serializable arguments otherwise.
• The method may return a JSON-serializable object as its first return value.
• The method may return an error as its last return value.
• The method must not have any other return values.

The JSON-RPC 2.0 handler only responds to POST requests.

h := jsonrpc.NewHandler()
h.RegisterMethod("echo", func (in string) string {
	return in
})
http.ListenAndServe(":8080", h)

Context

A method has access to the context.Context from the http.Request. A common use case is to use middleware to attach security credentials to the context, and then extract those credentials in the method to validate the user's authorization or return user-specific data.

h.RegisterMethod("secure", func(ctx context.Context) (string, error) {
	_, ok := ctx.Value("secure-cookie")
	if !ok {
		return "", fmt.Errorf("Invalid credentials.")
	}
	return "Top secret data", nil
})

JSON-RPC Errors

If you want to provide a JSON-RPC 2.0 error, use the Error struct. This lets you provide a custom error code and custom data.

h.RegisterMethod("bad", func (data json.RawMessage) error {
	return &jsonrpc.Error{
		Code: 101,
		Message: "This endpoint is bad.",
		Data: data,
	}
})

Multiple Registration

For convenience, you may register all methods on a value at once using Register.

a := SomeNewApi()
h.Register(a)

Motivation

When used this way, JSON-RPC 2.0 endpoints become self-documenting. They correspond exactly to their Go functions. They are testable.

This also allows almost any Go function to be used (unlike the built-in rpc/jsonrpc package in the Go standard library).