Dynamic population of example json in RAML

Question

I am loving how RAML can dynamically reference different schemas when declaring a resourceType like:

resourceTypes:
  - collection:
      get:
        responses:
          200:
            body:
              application/json:
                schema: <<schema>>
      post:
        body:
          application/json:
            schema: <<schema>>Create
        responses:
          200:
            body:
              application/json:
                schema: <<schema>>

Here I am able to use this like

/users:
  type: { collection: { schema: user } }

and RAML will give me user schema responses from GETs and POSTs and also use the userCreate schema for sending POST requests. Cool! Now I can reuse my collection definition with tons of different schemas.

But now that I want to have example json for everything too, I was hoping to utilize the <<schema>> var in another way to leverage "code reuse". I was hoping to be able to do

resourceTypes:
  - collection:
      get:
        responses:
          200:
            body:
              application/json:
                schema: <<schema>>
                example: examples/v1-<<schema>>.json
      post:
        body:
          application/json:
            schema: <<schema>>Create
            example: examples/v1-<<schema>>-create.json
        responses:
          200:
            body:
              application/json:
                schema: <<schema>>
                example: examples/v1-<<schema>>.json

but unfortunately this does not work. I get an error saying

error: File with path "/examples/v1-%3C%3Cschema%3E%3E.json" does not exist

So now I have resorted to manually adding this to all my collections and the /users example above has become

/users:
  type: { collection: { schema: user } }
  get:
    responses:
      200:
        body:
          application/json:
            example: !include examples/v1-user.json
  post:
    body:
      application/json:
        example: !include examples/v1-user-create.json
    responses:
      200:
        body:
          application/json:
            example: !include examples/v1-user.json

To me, this is a LOT of overhead just to add examples. Especially when I want to repeat the pattern over many resources.

The question: Is there a way to accomplish this?

Robin Green Robin Green · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-18T14:34:30

No, this is not allowed in RAML 0.8 according to the spec. It might be allowed in future versions though.

Dynamic population of example json in RAML

2 Answers