Rails ActiveResource with custom REST collection schema?

Question

I am trying to set up some Rails model working on top of the active_resource gem (ActiveResource)

module Core
    class RestResource < ActiveResource::Base
        self.format = :json
    end
end

module Core
    module API
        class BaseModel < ::Core::RestResource
        self.site = ENV['API_URI']
        self.headers['Api-Token'] = ENV['API_TOKEN']
        end
    end
end

module Core
    module API
        class MyModel < ::Core::API::BaseModel
        end
    end
end

And I am trying to run the rails console as following

2.3.1 :001 > MyModel = Core::API::MyModel
 => Core::API::MyModel 
2.3.1 :002 > MyModel.all
ArgumentError: expected an attributes Hash, got ["data", [{"first_name"=>"walter", "last_name"=>"white", "timestamp"=>1478515925}]]
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1377:in `load'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1124:in `initialize'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1051:in `new'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1051:in `instantiate_record'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1047:in `block in instantiate_collection'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/collection.rb:68:in `block in collect!'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/collection.rb:8:in `each'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/collection.rb:8:in `each'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/collection.rb:68:in `collect!'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1047:in `instantiate_collection'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:1016:in `find_every'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:923:in `find'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/bundler/gems/activeresource-f4bec7f8f389/lib/active_resource/base.rb:949:in `all'
    from (irb):2
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/gems/railties-5.0.0.1/lib/rails/commands/console.rb:65:in `start'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/gems/railties-5.0.0.1/lib/rails/commands/console_helper.rb:9:in `start'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/gems/railties-5.0.0.1/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:78:in `console'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/gems/railties-5.0.0.1/lib/rails/commands/commands_tasks.rb:49:in `run_command!'
    from /Users/nakwa/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.3.1/gems/railties-5.0.0.1/lib/rails/commands.rb:18:in `<top (required)>'
    from bin/rails:4:in `require'
    from bin/rails:4:in `<main>'
2.3.1 :003 >

On my rails console (rails instance powering the API) I can see

Started GET "/v1/my_model.json" for ::1 at 2016-11-08 16:42:11 +0100
Processing by V1::MyModelController#index as JSON
  MyModel Load (0.2ms)  SELECT "my_model".* FROM "my_model"
[active_model_serializers] Rendered V1::MyModelSerializer with MyModelSerializer::Adapter::Attributes (2.2ms)
Completed 200 OK in 13ms (Views: 2.8ms | ActiveRecord: 1.8ms)

My understanding is that Rails activeresource is expecting the JSON API to return something like :

[
  {"first_name": "walter", "last_name": "white"}, 
  {"first_name": "chuck", "last_name": "norris"}
]

When my collections looks like this:

{
  "data": [
    {"first_name": "walter", "last_name": "white"}, 
    {"first_name": "chuck", "last_name": "norris"}
  ],
  "collection": {
    "total_entries": 2
  }
}

I am now look for a nice way of customising the ActiveResource Collection parser, probably something like backbone.js is doing (http://backbonejs.org/#Collection-parse) but somehow I can't find out an obvious answer to that question.

Any idea? Thanks!

Can you show us the code for the `/v1/my_model.json` action? Perhaps the error is on the server (API) side, and not on the client (ActiveResource) side. — Wikiti, Nov 08 '16 at 16:16
It's a complex application with multiple endpoints running ... I renamed the variable in the examples above but mostly this is just a basic index method in a standard controller, rendering an active_model_serializers. The output of the API is exactly the one above. The problem is in the client, no in the API server. — nakwa, Nov 08 '16 at 16:21

score 6 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 02 '18 at 17:17

ActiveResource by default has very strong expectations concerning format of data returned by the API, but you can provide your own format for scenarios like this.

Any Ruby object implementing a few expected methods can be used as a format. ActiveResource itself implements formats as modules, so we will stick to this convention.

Being a lazy man, I will reuse the standard JsonFormat implementation and only override method decode:

module CustomJsonFormat
  include ActiveResource::Formats::JsonFormat

  extend self

  def decode(json)
    ActiveSupport::JSON.decode(json)['data']
  end
end

Now we just tell the ActiveResource subclass to use it:

class BaseModel < ActiveResource::Base
  self.format = CustomJsonFormat

  # ... set self.site, self.headers etc.
end

Rails ActiveResource with custom REST collection schema?

1 Answers1