How to standardize JSON results of Rails project

Question

I need to add extra tags to JSON results of Rails project.

GET /menus

{
  meta: {
    code: 200,
    message: ""
  }
  data: [
     // default rails response goes here
  ]
}

I don't want to do something like this in the controllers:

render json: { meta: { code: 200, message: ''}, data: @store.menus }

I looked in active_model_serializers gem, but didn't find any option that provides this type of customization.

Answer 1

You could create a JsonResponse class to act as a view model to wrap the data you want to send back:

class JsonResponse
  attr_accessor :status, :message, :data

  STATUS_SUCCESS = 200;
  STATUS_CREATED = 201;
  STATUS_NOT_FOUND = 404;

  def self.success(data, message = nil)
    self.new(STATUS_SUCCESS, message || "OK", data)
  end

  def self.created(data, message = nil)
    self.new(STATUS_CREATED, message || "CREATED", data)
  end

  def self.not_found(data = nil, message = nil)
    self.new(STATUS_NOT_FOUND, message || "NOT FOUND", data)
  end

  def initialize(status = 200, message = "", data = nil)
    @status = status
    @message = message
    @data = data
  end

  def to_hash
    {
      meta: {
        code: status,
        message: message || ""
      },
      data: data.is_a?(Hash) ? data : data.to_hash
    }
  end
end

This gives you several ways of using this:

# One-liners
render json: JsonResponse.new(JsonResponse::STATUS_SUCCESS, nil, @store.menus).to_hash
render json: JsonResponse.success(@store.menus).to_hash
render json: JsonResponse.created(@store).to_hash
render json: JsonResponse.not_found.to_hash

# Multi-liners
response = JsonResponse.new JsonResponse::STATUS_SUCCESS, nil, @store.menus
response = JsonResponse.success @store.menus
response = JsonResponse.created @store
response = JsonResponse.not_found

# Render the JSON view
render json: response.to_hash