Format an API Builder Data Connector API Response

The format of the API Builder Data Connector API Response looks similar to this:

{
  "success": true,
  "request-id": "9803004a-253b-4a2a-ad9a-f5ad9ece4479",
  "key": "employees",
  "employees": [
    {
      "id": "60254151dbfceb01888d6685",
      "fname": "Jane",
      "lname": "Doe",
      "title": "CFO"
    },
    .
    .
    .
    {
      "id": "6025413d94333f01894ed371",
      "fname": "Leor",
      "lname": "Brenman",
      "title": "SE"
    }
  ]
}

The actual data is in the property referenced by the key. In the example above this is the employees’ property, but will depend on the name of your model/table/collection.

However, you may prefer an output that simply contains your data as follows:

[
  {
    "id": "60254151dbfceb01888d6685",
    "fname": "Jane",
    "lname": "Doe",
    "title": "CFO"
  },
  .
  .
  .
  {
    "id": "6025413d94333f01894ed371",
    "fname": "Leor",
    "lname": "Brenman",
    "title": "SE"
  }
]

An easy way to achieve this is to add a post block to your model(s).

For example, consider the following post block, /blocks/formatoutput.js:

var APIBuilder = require('@axway/api-builder-runtime');

var formatoutput = APIBuilder.Block.extend({
    name: 'formatoutput',
    description: 'format output',

    action: function (req, resp, next) {
        let body = JSON.parse(resp.body)
        resp.status('200');
        resp.send(body[body.key]);
        next();
    }
});

module.exports = formatoutput;

The post block replaces the response body with just the data.

You attach this to your model using the after the property as follows:

var APIBuilder = require('@axway/api-builder-runtime');
var Model = APIBuilder.createModel('employee', {
    "connector": "mbs",
    "fields": {
        "fname": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "lname": {
            "type": "string"
        },
        "title": {
            "type": "string"
        }
    },
    "after": "formatoutput",
    "actions": [
        "create",
        "read",
        "update",
        "delete",
        "deleteAll"
    ]
});
module.exports = Model;

Note the line "after": "formatoutput", above.

Summary

API Builder makes it easy to adapt APIs to meet your needs. In this example, we saw how to use a post block to format the response of a data connector API call.