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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONNECTORS-99?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12906772#action_12906772
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Karl Wright commented on CONNECTORS-99:
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I could be wrong, but I don't think this represents an actual bug, just a wish.
Internally, the requests and responses for the API are converted to a node
structure. The node structure is actually based on XML rather than on json,
because it was originally used for configuration and specification objects
stored as XML in the database for connections and jobs. This is actually
germane, because in the API world these objects must be transmitted to and from
ACF via the API.
The internal XML-like object therefore has no way of specifying that some
family of nodes should always be treated as an array, while another node is
always just going to appear once. XML intrinsically does not have this
ability, except through the DTD mechanism. So we are left with either making
all nodes become arrays (which I rather suspect people would find completely
unacceptable), or using the intelligent approach that is the current
implementation.
> REST API serialization inconsistency
> ------------------------------------
>
> Key: CONNECTORS-99
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONNECTORS-99
> Project: Apache Connectors Framework
> Issue Type: Bug
> Components: API
> Environment: ACF trunk.
> Reporter: Andrzej Bialecki
>
> There is some inconsistency in REST APIs that makes the returned values more
> difficult to process than necessary. It boils down to the fact that lists of
> values are serialized into JSON arrays only when there is more than 1 element
> on the list, but they are serialized into plain JSON objects when there is 0
> or 1 element on the list. Example:
> * listings of jobs, connectors, connections, repositories etc. all suffer
> from this symptom:
> {code}
> * 1 element:
> {"job":{"id":"1283811504796","description":"job 1" ...
> * 2 elements:
> {"job":[{"id":"1283811504796","description":"job 1" ...
> {code}
> * nested elements, such as e.g. job metadata:
> {code}
> 1 element:
>
> "metadata":{"_value_":"","_attribute_name":"jobKey1","_attribute_value":"jobVal1"}
> 2 elements:
>
> "metadata":[{"_value_":"","_attribute_name":"jobKey1","_attribute_value":"jobVal1"},{"_value_":"","_attribute_name":"jobKey2","_attribute_value":"jobVal2"}]
> {code}
> In my opinion, in all the above cases the API should always return a JSON
> array for those elements that can occur with cardinality > 1.
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