Get IntelliJ to autocomplete based on CoreAPI Spec from localhost:8080/api/spec JSON

Question

We have a backend serving a number of APIs. These APIs are also described using the CoreAPI and this is exposed as a JSON to clients.

Instead of copying this JSON into my client code, how would I get IntelliJ to autocomplete based on this endpoint? We could e.g. have an EndpointManager that serves this JSON within my client and when I run EndpointManager.getAPI().user.list.url I want it to autocomplete when I type user. to offer me the options based on the part of the JSON

  "user": {
    "list": {
      "_type": "link",
      "url": "/user/",
      "action": "get"
    }
  }

I could just copy the JSON to my client code and I think IntelliJ would pick it up. But I want a dynamic way, so that we don't have to ping forth and back saying "I changed the backend API structure, fetch that JSON and commit again please" etc.

Answer 1

when using EndpointManager.getAPI() to get JSON, the actual data is only available in runtime (i.e. the IDE needs to evaluate the code to resolve properties), so resolving/completion fails using static code analysis.

You can let the IDE know what your runtime data looks like. Possible solution using JSDoc annotations:

/**
 * @typedef {Object} data
 * @property {Object} user
 * @property {Object} user.list
 * @property {string} user.list.url
 * @property {string} user.list.action
 * @property {string} user.list._type
 */

/**
 *
 * @type {data}
 */
let myJson = EndpointManager.getAPI();
alert(myJson.user.list.url);

See also https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/WEB-17419#comment=27-1058451, https://intellij-support.jetbrains.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/206349469-disable-unresolved-variable-on-json-object-received-by-ajax-call for other possible workarounds