Protobuf

You can use protocol buffers (aka protobuf) to define your API for either TypeScript or Python backends.

To declare a data type called ChatRoom, put the following in a .proto file:

message ChatRoom {
  option (rbt.v1alpha1.state) = {
  };
  repeated string messages = 1;
}

Reboot uses standard Protobuf definitions, but take note of the rbt options (aka, annotations), which requires you adding import "rbt/v1alpha1/options.proto";.

In the above example, rbt.v1alpha1.state declares that message ChatRoom is a Reboot data type.

In addition to defining the data type, you'll also need to define operations for that type, for example:

service ChatRoomMethods {
  // Returns the current list of recorded messages.
  rpc Messages(MessagesRequest) returns (MessagesResponse) {
    option (rbt.v1alpha1.method).reader = {
    };
  }

  // Adds a new message to the list of recorded messages.
  rpc Send(SendRequest) returns (SendResponse) {
    option (rbt.v1alpha1.method).writer = {
    };
  }
}

info

The current convention is that a state's interface has the same name as the state with the suffix Methods.

For each of the rpc methods that you declare, you use the rbt.v1alpha1.method annotation to specify the method kind.

Depending on its kind, a method might be able to only read (e.g., reader) or both read and write (e.g., writer) the state.

In the example above, ChatRoom has just one reader and one writer method, but it can have any number of reader, writer, transaction, and workflow methods.

To learn more about how you implement each data type's methods see Implement your API.