Get JSON from internal rest() call

There may be a simpler solution, but you could use a macro to convert the Freemarker object to JSON, for example:

http://ericbrandel.com/2013/03/28/freemarker-container-to-json/

Thank you. I'll have to try it to be sure, but I don't see where this macro inserts quotes around strings in the resulting JSON, and I don't see any escaping happening, so I don't think the JSON would be safe to use in JavaScript code if the data was tainted and unescaped.

Lithium Engineering: Please add a native options for escaped JSON string output from the internal rest() function.

Hey Shawn-ad,
You can do the following (Thanks DougS) in an endpoint (but not in components):

1) Create an endpoint with your rest call similar to the following (Note: the @@markup call will get you the xml string for the freemarker object):

${rest("/threads/recent").@@markup}

2) Set return type to text/plain

3) call your endpoint with the following query parameter

?xslt=json.xsl

This should return the json as a string.

Hope this helps,

Yuri

Thanks, Yuri. It is interesting that I can use your suggestion to convert any XML emdpoint into JSON. However, I was trying to get JSON data rendered inside the page HTML so that I don't have to make a separate HTTP request to the API (or to a custom endpoint).

Clearly Lithium has a way to get an API response as XML markup (using @@markup an endpoint). it would be great if I could get JSON using a similar FreeMarker translation method, and do so in a component to get it rendered in-page.

We will be releasing a couple Freemarker context objects for 14.12 that should help with these types of things.  For REST V2, we are releasing a new object named apiv2 that will have two functions in it: apiv2.toJson(<your v2 freemarker object>) and apiv2.toxml(<your v2 freemar object>).   You'll be able to take a REST V2 response, navigate its object graph, and then print out the object as a JSON or XML string (kind of similar to .@@markup for REST V1).  An example:

<#assign liql = "SELECT * FROM messages WHERE board.id = 'studio'" />
<#assign resp = rest("2.0", liql?url) />
<#-- print out the first item in the list of messages -->
${apiv2.toJson(resp.data.items[0])}

We'll also be releasing an object named restd that we already had (just for API V1 XML responses), but that was previously un-documented, and that has been extended to work with JSON for API V1 and V2.  The restd object will make a REST API call, but instead of returning a wrapped object response it will return either an XML string or a JSON string, depending on how the call is made.

• ${restd("/boards/id/extensions/topiclist")} will return an XML string version of an API V1 response.  
• ${restd("/boards/id/extensions/topiclist", "json")} will return a JSON string version of an API V1 response.
• ${restd("2.0", "/search?q=SELECT+*+FROM+messages")} will return a JSON string version of an API V2 response.
• ${restd("2.0", "/search?q=SELECT+*+FROM+messages", "xml")} will return an XML string version of an API V2 response.

-Doug