Endpoint Annotations

See the backend API tutorial for a recommended way of adding annotations using a Maven project. Maven App Engine Endpoints artifacts are provided to make it easy to create and build a backend API, and generate a client library from it. Alternatively, you could use the Google Plugin for Eclipse(GPE).

Endpoint annotations describe API configuration, methods, parameters, and other vital details that define the properties and behavior of the Endpoint. The annotation that specifies configuration and behavior across the entire API (affecting all the classes exposed in the API and all their exposed methods) is @Api. All public, non-static, non-bridge methods of a class annotated with @Api will be exposed in the public API.

If you need special API configuration for a particular method, you can optionally use @ApiMethod to set configuration on a per method basis. You configure these annotations by setting various attributes, as shown in the tables below.

@Api: API-Scoped Annotations

The annotation @Api is used to configure the whole API, and apply to all public methods of a class unless overridden by @ApiMethod.

(To override a given @Api annotation for a specific class within an API, see @ApiClass and @ApiReference.)

Required Imports

To use this feature, you need the following import:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.Api;

Attributes

Sample @Api Annotation

This annotation is placed above the class definition:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.AnnotationBoolean;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.Api;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiAuth;

@Api(
    version = "v1",
    description = "Sample API",
    scopes = {"ss0", "ss1"},
    audiences = {"aa0", "aa1"},
    clientIds = {"cc0", "cc1"},
    defaultVersion = AnnotationBoolean.TRUE
)

Client IDs and Audiences

In an OAuth2 authentication, an OAuth2 token is issued to a specific client ID, which means that this client ID can be used for restricting access to your APIs. When you register an iOS or Android application in the Google Developers Console, you create a client ID for it. This client ID is the one requesting an OAuth2 token from Google for authentication purposes. When the backend API is protected by auth, an OAuth2 access token is sent and opened by Google Cloud Endpoints, the client ID is extracted from the token, and then the ID is compared to the backend's declared acceptable Client ID list (the clientIds list).

So, if you want your Endpoints API to authenticate callers, you need to supply a list of clientIds that are allowed to request tokens that can be used with your application. This list should consist of the all client IDs you have obtained through the Developers Console for your web, Android, or iOS clients. (This means that the clients must be known at API build-time.) If you specify an empty list, [], then no clients can access the methods protected by Auth.

If you use the clientIds attribute and you want to test authenticated calls to your API using the Google API Explorer, you must supply its client ID in the list of clientIds: the value to use is com.google.api.server.spi.Constant.API_EXPLORER_CLIENT_ID.

About Audiences

The clientIds list protects the backend API from unauthorized clients. But further protection is needed to protect the clients, so that their auth token will work only for the intended backend API. For Android clients, this mechanism is the audiences attribute, in which you specify the client ID of the backend API.

Note that when you create a Google Developers Console Project, a default client ID is automatically created and named for use by the project. When you upload your backend API into App Engine, it uses that client ID. This is the web client ID mentioned in the backend API auth docs and the backend tutorial docs.

@ApiMethod: Method-Scoped Annotations

The annotation @ApiMethod is used to supply a different API configuration than the defaults provided by the @Api or @ApiClass annotations. Note that this is optional: all public, non static, non bridge methods in a class with an @Api annotation are exposed in the API, whether they have an @ApiMethod annotation or not.

Attributes within this annotation allow you to configure details of a single API method. If the same attribute is specified in @Api and @ApiMethod, @ApiMethod overrides.

Required Imports

To use this feature, you need the following imports:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.AnnotationBoolean;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiMethod;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiMethod.HttpMethod;

Attributes

Sample @ApiMethod Annotation

This annotation is placed above the method definition inside a class:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.AnnotationBoolean;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiMethod;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiMethod.HttpMethod;

@ApiMethod(
    name = "foos.list",
    path = "foos",
    httpMethod = HttpMethod.GET,
    scopes = {"s0", "s1"},
    audiences = {"a0", "a1"},
    clientIds = {"c0", "c1"}
)
public List<Foo> listFoos() {
  return null;
}

Methods that take an entity as a parameter should use HttpMethod.POST (for insert operations) or HttpMethod.PUT (for update operations):

@ApiMethod(
    name = "foos.insert",
    path = "foos",
    httpMethod = HttpMethod.POST
)
public void insertFoo(Foo foo) {
}

@Named

The @Named annotation is required for all non-entity type parameters passed to server-side methods. This annotation indicates the name of the parameter in the request that gets injected here. A parameter that is not annotated with @Named is injected with the whole request object.

Required Imports

To use this feature, you need the following imports:

import javax.inject.Named;

This sample shows the use of @Named:

@ApiMethod(
    name = "foos.remove",
    path = "foos/{id}",
    httpMethod = HttpMethod.DELETE
 )
 public void removeFoo(@Named("id") String id) {
 }

where @Named specifies that only the id parameter is injected in the request.

@ApiNamespace

The @ApiNamespace annotation causes the generated client libraries to have the namespace you specify, rather than a default constructed during client library generation.

By default, if you don't use this annotation, the namespace that is used is the reverse of your-project-id.appspot.com. That is, the package path will be com.appspot.your-project-id.yourApi.

You can change the default namespace by supplying the @ApiNamespace annotation within the @Api annotation:

@Api(
    name = "tictactoe",
    version = "v1",
    namespace=@ApiNamespace(ownerDomain="your-company.com", ownerName="YourCo", packagePath="cloud/platform")
)

with the ownerDomain attribute set to your own company domain and ownerName set to your company name, for example, your-company.com. The reverse of the ownerDomain will then be used for the package path: com.your-company.yourApi.

You can optionally use the packagePath attribute to provide further scoping. For example, by setting packagePath to cloud, the package path used in the client library will be com.your-company.cloud.yourApi. You can add more values to the package path by supplying the delimiter /: packagePath="cloud/platform".

@Nullable

This annotation indicates that a parameter of a method is optional (and therefore a query parameter). @Nullable may only be used with @Named parameters.

@ApiClass

In a multiclass API, used to specify different properties for a given class, overriding equivalent properties in the @Api configuration. See Using @ApiClass for Properties that Can Differ Between Classes for a complete description of this annotation.

@ApiReference

In a multiclass API, used to supply an alternate method of annotation inheritance. See Using @ApiReference Inheritance for a complete description of this annotation.

@ApiResourceProperty

@ApiResourceProperty provides more control over how resource properties are exposed in the API. You can use it on a property getter or setter to omit the property from an API resource. You can also use it on the field itself, if the field is private, to expose it in the API. You can also use this annotation to change the name of a property in an API resource.

Required Imports

To use this feature, you need the following imports:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiResourceProperty;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.AnnotationBoolean;

Attributes

Sample Class with @ApiResourceProperty

The following snippet shows a class with property getters annotated with @ApiResourceProperty:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.Api;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiResourceProperty;
import com.google.api.server.spi.config.AnnotationBoolean;

@Api(name = "myendpoint")
public class MyEndpoint {
  class Resp {
    private String foobar = "foobar";
    private String bin = "bin";

    @ApiResourceProperty
    private String visible = "nothidden";

    @ApiResourceProperty(ignored = AnnotationBoolean.TRUE)
    public String getBin() {
      return bin;
    }

    public void setBin(String bin) {
      this.bin = bin;
    }

    @ApiResourceProperty(name = "baz")
    public String getFoobar() {
      return foobar;
    }

    public void setFoobar(String foobar) {
      this.foobar = foobar;
    }
  }

  public Resp getResp() {
    return new Resp();
  }
}

In the code snippet above, @ApiResourceProperty is applied to the getBin getter for the bin property, with the ignored attribute setting telling the Endpoints framework to omit this property in the API resource.

@ApiResourceProperty is also applied to the private field visible, which has no getter or setter. Using this annotation will expose this field as a property in the API resource.

In the same snippet, @ApiResourceProperty is also applied to a different getter, getFoobar, which returns a property value for the foobar property. The name attribute in this annotation tells the Endpoints framework to change the property name in the API resource. The property value itself is unchanged.

In the above example snippet, the JSON representation of a Resp object would look something like this:

{"baz": "foobar", "visible": "nothidden"}

@ApiTransformer

The @ApiTransformer annotation customizes how a type is exposed in Endpoints through transformation to and from another type. (The transformer specified must be an implementation of com.google.api.server.spi.config.Transformer.)

Using the @ApiTransformer annotation on a class is the preferred way to specify a transformer. However, you could alternatively specify your custom transformer in the transformer attribute of the @Api annotation.

Required imports

To use this feature, you need this import:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiTransformer;

Sample class with @ApiTransformer

The following snippet shows a class annotated with @ApiTransformer:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.ApiTransformer;

@ApiTransformer(BarTransformer.class)
public class Bar {
  private final int x;
  private final int y;

  public Bar(int x, int y) {
    this.x = x;
    this.y = y;
  }

  public int getX() {
    return x;
  }

  public int getY() {
    return y;
  }
}

This class will be transformed by the BarTransformer class.

Sample Endpoints transformer class

The following snippet shows a sample transformer class named BarTransformer. This is the transformer referenced by @ApiTransformer in the preceding snippet:

import com.google.api.server.spi.config.Transformer;

public class BarTransformer implements Transformer<Bar, String> {
  public String transformTo(Bar in) {
    return in.getX() + "," + in.getY();
  }

  public Bar transformFrom(String in) {
    String[] xy = in.split(",");
    return new Bar(Integer.parseInt(xy[0]), Integer.parseInt(xy[1]));
  }
}

Assuming we have an object with a property bar of type Bar, without the above transformer, the object would be represented as:

{"bar": {"x": 1, "y": 2}}

With the transformer, the object is represented as:

{"bar": "1,2"}

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