The l2 Format

Find in this page an informal description of the rules for authoring .l2 API files. This document expects some familiarity with Lama2.

To quickly get started with Lama2, head over to Examples.

On the other hand, if you are a developer and wish to learn more about the formal grammar underlying l2, visit the Grammar section.

Comments start with `#`¶

Lines starting with # are comments and hence ignored altogether

All HTTP Verbs supported - including the common GET/POST/PUT¶

JSON is the default submission type, but MULTIPART is supported too¶

`varjson` is a simpler syntax to specify flat JSONs¶

varjson values are defined as follows:

hello=world
foo=bar

The above results in a JSON submission of the form:

{
    "hello": "world",
    "foo": "bar"
}

Nested JSON can simply be dumped at the end of the document¶

The JSON recognition engine is quite lenient. It can deal with minor errors in the format (such as having single quotes instead of double quotes, trailing garbage, or an extra comma after the last element in an array,).

POST
https://httpbin.org/post

{
    "a": "b",
    "c": "d"
}

MULTIPART allows both file uploads & the usual fields¶

Example:

POST
MULTIPART
http://localhost:8000/register
userid=lince5
file@./helloworld.jpg

Note

The file path is relative to the request file.

Cookies are sent as headers¶

Cookies are specified in a Cookie header as follows:

Cookie:'sessionid=foo;another-cookie=bar'

Environments variables/commands can be defined in `<requests_dir>/l2.env`¶

By default, l2 looks for a l2.env file in the same directory as the given request file directory. Example l2.env:

export PHOTO=`base64 aadhaarlarge.jpg`
export AHOST="http://localhost:8000"

The environment file can load results of commands¶

Use the backtick notation \command`` to place the results of commands into environment variables:

export PHOTO=`base64 image.jpeg`

One can load the PHOTO variable in API files.

Chain requests through Javascript blocks¶

Lama2 supports plain Javascript (JS) blocks as a glue for manipulating responses and passing on values to later stages. At a higher level, a chain of requests may look like:

Javascript 1
---
L2 Request 1
---
Javscript 2
---
L2 Request 2

The triple-dash (---) separator is mandatory. The special variable result contains the response from previous stages.

For example, in the above case, Javascript 2 can access the response from L2 Request 1 through the result variable.

Learn more about request chaining in Examples.