aversion 0.1.0

How AVersion Works

AVersion is a composite application, similar to the Paste urlmap. It is configured with several different applications–each of which represents a different version of the desired end application. It can also be configured with a special application which handles unversioned API requests, e.g., by returning a list of the available versions. AVersion then selects the appropriate application to pass a given request to, based on the URI prefix, or a version parameter on the content type or types specified in the “Content-Type” or “Accept” headers. In addition, AVersion can determine the best content type for the reply, based on the URI suffix (e.g., “.json” could map to content type “application/json”) or the “Accept” header.

Configuring AVersion

The first step in configuring AVersion is to set up the section of the Paste INI configuration file:

[composite:main]
use = egg:aversion#aversion

The next step is to specify the recognized versions and their associated applications. The default application–the one called if no version can be determined–is specified by the version key. The specific versions are then specified by prefixing a version specification with version.; e.g., if you call the second version of your application “v2”, you would specify version.v2. The value of any of these keys is a Paste application. If you have a “vers_list” application and “api_v1” and “api_v2” as the two versions of your API, this configuration would look like:

version = vers_list
version.v1 = api_v1
version.v2 = api_v2

[app:vers_list]
...

[app:api_v1]
...

[app:api_v2]
...

This declares the available versions, but we have not provided any criteria to select the version to route a request to. We will consider a simple URI mapping first; these options are declared by prefixing the URI prefix with uri., and the value will be one of the declared version identifiers. For example, let us say that the URI “/v1” will map to the “v1” API, while “/v2” maps to the “v2” API; the relevant configuration would then be:

uri./v1 = v1
uri./v2 = v2

Note that these URI prefixes will be normalized, e.g., “//v1//” normalizes to “/v1”. Also, AVersion takes care to ensure that the longest match will be used; if one of your URIs was “/v1.1” and the other was “/v1”, a request to “/v1.1/foo” would be routed to the first. Finally, the prefixes are assumed to be complete path fragments; the configuration shown above would not route a request to “/v2-foo” to the “v2” application, while “/v2/foo” would be so routed.

Some applications also need to allow specifying the API version through a parameter on the content type. For instance, if the “Content-Type” header on a request body is set to “application/json;version=2”, we want to select the “v2” API when the request is made against “/”. (The version determined from the URI trumps any version determined from “Content-Type” or “Accept”.) Similarly, if the “Accept” header includes “application/json;version=2”, and the version cannot be determined from the URI prefix or the “Content-Type” header, then we want to use the “version” parameter on that selected content type.

To configure the recognized content types, and to set up rules that allow selection of the correct version, declare the types as configuration keys prefixed with type., e.g., type.application/json. The value of this configuration key can then declare the version with a simple text substitution, e.g.:

type.application/json = version:"v%(version)s"

The text substitution should result in the name of the version, as declared above. It is also possible to alter the type, e.g., if a given content type actually maps to another. Consider, for instance:

type.application/vnd.fooapp = type:"application/%(fmt)s"
    version:"v%(version)s"

In this example, the content type “application/vnd.fooapp;fmt=json;version=2” would make a call to the “v2” API, with the “Accept” header rewritten to select “application/json”.

Both the “type” and “version” tokens are optional in the type. configuration values. When the “type” token is omitted, the existing content type is used, and when the “version” token is omitted, no version determination is made. Do note, however, that the “Content-Type” header of the response will likely be that appearing in the “type” token; future work may be done to correct this.

Since the type. keys can overwrite the content types specified in the “Accept” header, there is one more optional type of key that can select the content type based on the URI suffix. For instance, the application may desire that, if the “.json” suffix is present, the selected content type should be “application/json”. To configure this, simply use the suffix as a configuration key; the value will be the desired content type:

.json = application/json

Finally, the type. keys may select a version other than the one which is desired. For instance, the two API versions “v1.1” and “v2”–appearing as a parameter to a content type–may identify the same version of the API. To enable this, use the alias. keys, like so:

alias.v1.1 = v2

In this example, the content type “application/vnd.fooapp;fmt=json;version=1.1” would also make a call to the “v2” API.

Although the above description of alias. references content types, aliasing also works for URIs, e.g.:

uri./v1.1 = v1.1

Here, accesses to the “/v1.1” endpoint will also be passed to the “v2” api.

Putting this all together, a complete AVersion configuration may look like the following:

[composite:main]
use = egg:aversion#aversion

# Specify the version applications
version = vers_list
version.v1 = api_v1
version.v2 = api_v2

# Specify an alias
alias.v1.1 = v2

# Map the URI prefixes
uri./v1 = v1
uri./v1.1 = v1.1
uri./v2 = v2

# Recognize several types
type.application/json = version:"v%(version)s"
type.application/xml = version:"v%(version)s"
type.application/vnd.fooapp = type:"application/%(fmt)s"
    version:"v%(version)s"

# Also recognize URI suffixes
.json = application/json
.xml = application/xml

[app:vers_list]
# Specify the vers_list application
...

[app:api_v1]
# Specify the v1 API application
...

[app:api_v2]
# Specify the v2 API application
...

Extending AVersion

AVersion processes a given request first for the URI prefixes and suffixes, then for a version specified by the “Content-Type” header on the request body, then for a version and content type set through the “Accept” header (for which it implements the HTTP best-match content type algorithm). The first content type and version found in this processing will be used.

It is possible to extend the aversion.AVersion class to alter the order of these processing steps, or to provide other processing steps. The key is to override the _process() method. This method takes one required argument–the request object–and one optional “result” argument, and returns the result. (If the result argument is not provided, _process() allocates an instance of aversion.Result.) It calls each of _proc_uri(), _proc_ctype_header(), and _proc_accept_header() in turn.

Developers may also be interested in some of the available utility functions, which are used by AVersion. The quoted_split() function can handle splitting multi-valued headers, like the “Accept” header, even in the face of quoted arguments possibly containing the separator. The parse_ctype() function takes a content type, complete with its parameters, and returns the bare content type and a dictionary containing those parameters. Finally, best_match() implements the best-match algorithm for content types, and may be useful as an example for implementing matchers for other “Accept-*” headers.

Advanced AVersion Usage

AVersion adds several variables to the WSGI environment that may be useful to applications. The added WSGI environment variables all begin with aversion. and are described below.

{
    'versions': {
        'v1': {
            'name': 'v1',
            'app': <Python callable>,
            'params': {},
            'prefixes': ['/v1'],
        },
        'v2': {
            'name': 'v2',
            'app': <Python callable>,
            'params': {},
            'prefixes': ['/v2'],
        },
    },
    'aliases': {
        'v1.1': {
            'alias': 'v1.1',
            'version': 'v2',
            'params': {},
        },
    },
    'types': {
        'application/json': {
            'name': 'application/json',
            'params': {},
            'suffixes': ['.json'],
        },
        'application/xml': {
            'name': 'application/xml',
            'params': {},
            'suffixes': ['.xml'],
        },
        'application/vnd.fooapp': {
            'name': 'application/vnd.fooapp',
            'params': {},
        },
    },
}

Advanced AVersion Configuration

The discussion about the aversion.config WSGI environment variable referred to parameters on versions, aliases, and content types. These parameters are specifically for the benefit of applications, and are ignored by AVersion; they can be used for communicating important information about the configured versions, aliases, and content types to the applications, particularly the default application.

To configure parameters on versions, simply add ‘key=”value”’ after the version application name, e.g.:

version.v1 = api_v1 key1="value1" key2="value2"

For aliases, the syntax is similar:

alias.v1.1 = v2 key1="value1" key2="value2"

The syntax is a little more complex for content type rules; the ‘key=”value”’ tokens must be prefixed with “param:”, e.g.:

type.application/json = version:"v%(version)s"
    param:key1="value1" param:key2="value2"

Note that all values must be quoted. Both double quotes and single quotes are acceptable quote characters, and it is safe to include spaces within the quoted text.

There is one more advanced configuration topic. By default, AVersion overwrites the “Accept” and “Content-Type” headers. Since the information it would use for this overwriting is available in the WSGI environment, it is possible to disable this behavior by setting the overwrite_headers configuration key to “off”. (Recognized values are: “false”, “f”, “off”, “no”, “disable”, and “0”; “true”, “t”, “on”, “yes”, “enable”, and any non-zero integer are recognized as “on”, the default value for overwrite_headers.)