AshJsonApi allows you to expose your resource actions over a (JSON:API)[https://jsonapi.org]. This API supports all of the features of JSON:API and Ash, like sorting, filtering, pagination, and side loading.
The kings of thing this extension handles:
- Route Creation: AshJsonApi defines routes and actions in your app based on resource configurations
- Deserialization: When an incoming HTTP request hits a AshJsonApi defined route/action, AshJsonApi will parse it from
/api/users?filter[admin]=trueinto a call to ash - Query Execution: AshJsonApi then executes the parsed Ash Action (this is the integration point between AshJsonApi and Ash Core, where Ash Actions are defined)
- Serialization: AshJsonApi then serializes the result of the Ash Action into JSON API objects.
- Response: AshJsonApi then sends this JSON back to the client
- Schema Generation: AshJsonApi generates a machine-readable JSON Schema of your entire API and a route/action that can serve it
- OpenAPI generation: AshJsonApi generates an OpenAPI spec for your API, which provides human readable documentation effortlessly.
Ash takes care of all of the data related work for a request (CRUD, Sorting, Filtering, Pagination, Side Loading, and Authorization) while AshJsonApi more or less replaces controllers and serializers.
The beauty of putting all of that data functionality into a non-web layer (Ash) is that it can be used in many contexts. A JSON:API is one context - but there are others such as GraphQL or just using an Ash Resource from other code within an Application.