// Copyright (c) 2015 The btcsuite developers
// Copyright (c) 2015-2022 The Decred developers
// Use of this source code is governed by an ISC
// license that can be found in the LICENSE file.

/*
Package dcrjson provides infrastructure for working with Decred JSON-RPC APIs.

When communicating via the JSON-RPC protocol, all requests and responses must be
marshalled to and from the wire in the appropriate format.  This package
provides infrastructure and primitives to ease this process.

# JSON-RPC Protocol Overview

This information is not necessary in order to use this package, but it does
provide some intuition into what the marshalling and unmarshalling that is
discussed below is doing under the hood.

As defined by the JSON-RPC spec, there are effectively two forms of messages on
the wire:

  - Request Objects
    {"jsonrpc":"1.0","id":"SOMEID","method":"SOMEMETHOD","params":[SOMEPARAMS]}
    NOTE: Notifications are the same format except the id field is null.

  - Response Objects
    {"result":SOMETHING,"error":null,"id":"SOMEID"}
    {"result":null,"error":{"code":SOMEINT,"message":SOMESTRING},"id":"SOMEID"}

For requests, the params field can vary in what it contains depending on the
method (a.k.a. command) being sent.  Each parameter can be as simple as an int
or a complex structure containing many nested fields.  The id field is used to
identify a request and will be included in the associated response.

When working with streamed RPC transports, such as websockets, spontaneous
notifications are also possible.  As indicated, they are the same as a request
object, except they have the id field set to null.  Therefore, servers will
ignore requests with the id field set to null, while clients can choose to
consume or ignore them.

Unfortunately, the original Bitcoin JSON-RPC API (and hence anything compatible
with it) doesn't always follow the spec and will sometimes return an error
string in the result field with a null error for certain commands.  However,
for the most part, the error field will be set as described on failure.

# Marshalling and Unmarshalling

To simplify the marshalling of the requests and responses, the MarshalCmd and
MarshalResponse functions are provided.  They return the raw bytes ready to be
sent across the wire.

Unmarshalling a received Request object is a two step process:
 1. Unmarshal the raw bytes into a Request struct instance via json.Unmarshal
 2. Use ParseParams on the Method and Params fields of the unmarshalled Request
    to create a concrete command or notification instance with all struct fields
    set accordingly.  The concrete types must have been registered for the method
    by an external package

This approach is used since it provides the caller with access to the additional
fields in the request that are not part of the command such as the ID.

Unmarshalling a received Response object is also a two step process:
 1. Unmarshal the raw bytes into a Response struct instance via json.Unmarshal
 2. Depending on the ID, unmarshal the Result field of the unmarshalled
    Response to create a concrete type instance

As above, this approach is used since it provides the caller with access to the
fields in the response such as the ID and Error.

# Command Creation

This package provides the NewCmd function which takes a method (command) name
and variable arguments.  The function includes full checking to ensure the
parameters are accurate according to provided method, however these checks are,
obviously, run-time which means any mistakes won't be found until the code is
actually executed.  However, it is quite useful for user-supplied commands
that are intentionally dynamic.

External packages can and should implement types implementing Command for use
with MarshalCmd/ParseParams.

# Custom Command Registration

The command handling of this package is built around the concept of registered
commands.  This is true for the wide variety of commands already provided by the
package, but it also means caller can easily provide custom commands with all
of the same functionality as the built-in commands.  Use the RegisterCmd
function for this purpose.

A list of all registered methods can be obtained with the RegisteredCmdMethods
function.

# Command Inspection

All registered commands are registered with flags that identify information such
as whether the command applies to a chain server, wallet server, or is a
notification along with the method name to use.  These flags can be obtained
with the MethodUsageFlags flags, and the method can be obtained with the
CmdMethod function.

# Help Generation

To facilitate providing consistent help to users of the RPC server, this package
exposes the GenerateHelp and function which uses reflection on registered
commands or notifications to generate the final help text.

In addition, the MethodUsageText function is provided to generate consistent
one-line usage for registered commands and notifications using reflection.

# Errors

There are 2 distinct type of errors supported by this package:

  - General errors related to marshalling or unmarshalling or improper use of
    the package (type Error)
  - RPC errors which are intended to be returned across the wire as a part of
    the JSON-RPC response (type RPCError)

The first category of errors (type Error) typically indicates a programmer error
and can be avoided by properly using the API.  Errors of this type will be
returned from the various functions available in this package.  They identify
issues such as unsupported field types, attempts to register malformed commands,
and attempting to create a new command with an improper number of parameters.
The specific reason for the error can be detected by type asserting it to a
*dcrjson.Error and accessing the ErrorKind field.

The second category of errors (type RPCError), on the other hand, are useful for
returning errors to RPC clients.  Consequently, they are used in the previously
described Response type.
*/
package dcrjson
