Codecs

A codec specifies how to map from and to raw values that are sent over the network. Raw values, which are natively supported by client/server interpreters, include Strings, byte arrays, Files and multiparts.

There are built-in codecs for most common types such as String, Int etc. Codecs are usually defined as implicit values and resolved implicitly when they are referenced.

For example, a query[Int]("quantity") specifies an input parameter which corresponds to the quantity query parameter and will be mapped as an Int. There’s an implicit Codec[Int] value that is referenced by the query method (which is defined in the tapir package).

In a server setting, if the value cannot be parsed as an int, a decoding failure is reported, and the endpoint won’t match the request, or a 400 Bad Request response is returned (depending on configuration).

Optional and multiple parameters

Some inputs/outputs allow optional, or multiple parameters:

  • path segments are always required
  • query and header values can be optional or multiple (repeated query parameters/headers)
  • bodies can be optional, but not multiple

In general, optional parameters are represented as Option values, and multiple parameters as List values. For example, header[Option[String]]("X-Auth-Token") describes an optional header. An input described as query[List[String]]("color") allows multiple occurences of the color query parameter, with all values gathered into a list.

Note that only textual bodies can be optional (optional binary/streaming bodies aren’t supported). That’s because a body cannot be missing - there’s always some body. This is unlike e.g. a query parameter: for which a value can be present, a value can be empty (but defined!), or the parameter might be missing altogether - which corresponds to a None. That’s why only strict (non-streaming) textual bodies, which are empty (""), will be considered as an empty value (None), if the codec allows optional values.

Implementation note

To support optional and multiple parameters, inputs/outputs don’t require implicit Codec values (which represent only mandatory values), but CodecForOptional and CodecForMany implicit values.

A CodecForOptional can be used in a context which allows optional values. Given a Codec[T], instances of both CodecForOptional[T] and CodecForOptional[Option[T]] will be generated (that’s also the way to add support for custom optional types). The first one will require a value, and report a decoding failure if a value is missing. The second will properly map to an Option, depending if the value is present or not.

Schemas

A codec also contains the schema of the mapped type. This schema information is used when generating documentation. Schemas consists of the schema type, which is one of the values defined in SchemaType, such as SString, SBinary, SArray or SProduct (for objects). Moreover, a schema contains meta-data: value optionality, description and low-level format.

For primitive types, the schema values are built-in, and defined in the Schema companion object.

The schema is left unchanged when mapping over a codec, as the underlying representation of the value doesn’t change.

When codecs are derived for complex types, e.g. for json mapping, schemas are looked up through implicit Schema[T] values. See custom types for more details.

Codec format

Codecs carry an additional type parameter, which specifies the codec format. Each format corresponds to a media type, which describes the low-level format of the raw value (to which the codec encodes). Some built-in formats include text/plain, application/json and multipart/form-data. Custom formats can be added by creating an implementation of the tapir.MediaType trait.

Thanks to codec being parametrised by codec formats, it is possible to have a Codec[MyCaseClass, TextPlain, _] which specifies how to serialize a case class to plain text, and a different Codec[MyCaseClass, Json, _], which specifies how to serialize a case class to json. Both can be implicitly available without implicit resolution conflicts.

Different codec formats can be used in different contexts. When defining a path, query or header parameter, only a codec with the TextPlain media type can be used. However, for bodies, any media types is allowed. For example, the input/output described by jsonBody[T] requires a json codec.