Handling better response from Aws::Route53::Client.new

Question

First time trying to use the Ruby AWS ADK V2 and I am trying to format the data i am getting back and it seems quiet hard getting it into useable format.

All I want to do is get a list of Hosted Zones and display in a table.

I have a helper that has:

def hosted_zones
  r53 = Aws::Route53::Client.new
    #convert to hash first so we can parse and covert to json
    h = (r53.list_hosted_zones).to_hash
    j = JSON.parse((h.to_json))
end

which then returns me the following JSON:

{
  "hosted_zones": [{
    "id": "/hostedzone/Z1HSDGASSSME",
    "name": "stagephil.com.",
    "caller_reference": "2016-07-12T15:33:45.277646707+01:00",
    "config": {
      "comment": "Private DNS zone for stage",
      "private_zone": true
    },
    "resource_record_set_count": 10
  }, {
    "id": "/hostedzone/ZJDGASSS0ZN3",
    "name": "stagephil.com.",
    "caller_reference": "2016-07-12T15:33:41.290143511+01:00",
    "config": {
      "comment": "Public DNS zone for stage",
      "private_zone": false
    },
    "resource_record_set_count": 7
  }],
  "is_truncated": false,
  "max_items": 100
}

To which I am running a really but while statement to interact through all the hosted_zone entries into a table.

Is this the best way to get the response or can you request the response to be json already?

Answer 1

Why are you converting a hash to JSON, only to convert it to a hash again? JSON.parse(some_hash.to_json) will just give you some_hash.

That being said, I don't think it is possible to get JSON directly from AWS, mainly due to the fact that their API responds with XML. I think that your solution is ideal if that's all you're doing, but if you want, you can make a request with an HTTP client and then take the XML that you receive and use something like ActiveSupport's Hash.from_xml to create a hash that you can then convert to JSON.