JSON over TChannel

This document outlines how we encode JSON over TChannel.

For JSON call requests the as (arg scheme) transport header must be set to json. Requests will be made with call req messages and responses will be sent using call res messages, with values for arg1, arg2 and arg3 as defined in Arguments.

For each call req, the service name should be set to the TChannel service being called.

For each call res, the response code must be set to 0 if the response was successful and the response code must be set to 1 if the response was a failure.

Arguments

For both call req and call res

  • arg1 must be the method name as defined by [arg1][]
  • arg2 must be the application headers encoded as JSON
  • arg3 must be the application response as defined by [arg3][]

arg1

The method name must be a UTF-8 string. It's recommended that you use alphanumeric characters and _.

arg3

arg3 must be encoded as JSON.

For call req messages this is just an arbitary JSON payload.

For call res messages:

  • In the case of success the response is an arbitrary JSON payload.
  • In the case of failures the response is a JSON encoded error. It's recommended that errors have a message field that is a human readable string and a type field that's a static string identifying what type of error it is.