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ActiveModel::Serializer implementation and Rails hooks

License: MIT License

Ruby 100.00%

ruby json resource-serializer

active_model_serializers's Introduction

ActiveModelSerializers

About

ActiveModelSerializers is undergoing some renovations. See Development Status.

Getting Help

If you find a bug, please report an Issue and see our contributing guide.

If you have a question, please post to Stack Overflow.

If you'd like to chat, we have a community slack.

Thanks!

Documentation

If you're reading this at https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers you are reading documentation for our master, which is not yet released.

0.10 (0-10-stable) Documentation		Guides
0.9 (0-9-stable) Documentation
0.8 (0-8-stable) Documentation

Status of AMS

Status:

❗️ All existing PRs against master will need to be closed and re-opened against 0-10-stable, if so desired
❗️ Master, for the moment, won't have any released version of AMS on it.
👀 See below for alternatives

Changes to 0.10.x maintenance:

The 0.10.x version has become a huge maintenance version. We had hoped to get it in shape for a 1.0 release, but it is clear that isn't going to happen. Almost none of the maintainers from 0.8, 0.9, or earlier 0.10 are still working on AMS. We'll continue to maintain 0.10.x on the 0-10-stable branch, but maintainers won't otherwise be actively developing on it.
- We may choose to make a 0.11.x ( 0-11-stable) release based on 0-10-stable that just removes the deprecations.

What's happening to AMS:

There's been a lot of churn around AMS since it began back in Rails 3.2 and a lot of new libraries are around and the JSON:API spec has reached 1.0.
If there is to be a 1.0 release of AMS, it will need to address the general needs of serialization in much the way ActiveJob can be used with different workers.
The next major release is in development. We're starting simple and avoiding, at least at the outset, all the complications in AMS version, especially all the implicit behavior from guessing the serializer, to the association's serializer, to the serialization type, etc.
The basic idea is that models to serializers are a one to many relationship. Everything will need to be explicit. If you want to serialize a User with a UserSerializer, you'll need to call it directly. The serializer will essentially be for defining a basic JSON:API resource object: id, type, attributes, and relationships. The serializer will have an as_json method and can be told which fields (attributes/relationships) to serialize to JSON and will likely not know serialize any more than the relations id and type. Serializing anything more about the relations would require code that called a serializer. (This is still somewhat in discussion).
If this works out, the idea is to get something into Rails that existing libraries can use.

See PR 2121 where these changes were introduced for more information and any discussion.

Alternatives

jsonapi-rb is a highly performant and modular JSON:API-only implementation. There's a vibrant community around it that has produced projects such as JSON:API Suite.
fast_jsonapi is a lightning fast JSON:API serializer for Ruby Objects.
jsonapi-resources is a popular resource-focused framework for implementing JSON:API servers.
blueprinter is a fast, declarative, and API spec agnostic serializer that uses composable views to reduce duplication. From your friends at Procore.
Alba is fast and spec agnostic serialization solution. It has some unique features such as global or per-resource error handling.

For benchmarks against alternatives, see https://github.com/rails-api/active_model_serializers/tree/benchmarks

Semantic Versioning

This project adheres to semver

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md

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active_model_serializers's Issues

embed :ids, include: false

From looking at the code, I can't see a way to disable include once you've enabled it. I have an Ember app, with embed :ids, include: true in an ApplicationSerializer and want to be able to disable it for one of the serializers. (A double nested include is breaking the adapter).

Currently, I've just removed the line from the ApplicationSerializer
Is there some way to handle this that I missed?
If not would you welcome a patch?

Cheers,
Brad

How do you tell a serializer to use the object name in a polymorphic association?

Apologies for raising an issue about this, but after much looking I haven't been able to have much success.

I've seen the pull requests where this feature's been put in, but looking at the source it looked like it was introspective, however when I've tried to use code such as this (owner is a polymorphic association):

class MesssageSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :id

  has_one :owner

end

the key for the owner relationship in the JSON response is still "owner" when it should be object_type, in this case "user". I've also tried adding

has_one :owner, :polymorphic => true

however this hasn't produced the desired result either,

Apologies if I'm missing something simple but I haven't been able to work this out.

Using v. 0.5.1 of the gem.

Thanks.

Serializers for Associations?

I understand that currently there is no way to define the attributes on associations within a serializer, please correct me if I'm wrong. Are there any plans to add this? I don't mind throwing in some work to do this myself, but wasn't sure that was desired direction.

Example:

#<Post id: 1, title: "My Title", body: "My body of text.">

class Post < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :title, :body
  has_many :comments
end

#<Comment id: 1, name: "Ryan", email: "[email protected]", body: "I did a thing!">

class Comment < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :name, :body
end

render json: @post

Now, let's say I wanted to hide the email address in the json output. This works perfectly when I visit /comments/1.json but when I embed the comment inside of the post's output, it's perfectly visible!

{
  "post": {
    "title": 3,
    "body": 3,
    "comments": [
      {
        "id": 1
        "name": "Ryan",
        "email": "[email protected]"
        "body": "I did a thing!"
      }
    ]
  }
}

render :xml

Great gem.

Would be great it would be possible to render :xml equal to :json. (Same serializer)

0.5.0 Generator Problem

Running rails g serializer post produces a serializer:

class PostSerializer < ApplicationSerialzer

rather than

class PostSerialzer < ActiveModel::Serializer

Running posts.json or post/:id.json produces
NameErrer (uninitialized constant ApplciationSerializer)

Serializers on attributes are not used

I'm not sure if I'm simply doing this wrong, but if I specify an attribute that is a belongs_to, and that association has a serializer, that serializer does not get applied.

For example, BarSerializer is not used in this case when serializing a Foo instance:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :bar
end

class FooSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :bar
end

How to make it work with Grape?

Can anyone advise me on how to use AM::Serializers with Grape? Currently I am using Rabl and planning to move away from it. Is there an existing bridge for Grape?

can't specify serializer for a collection

In a controller, if I:
render json: Post.all, serializer: SpecialSerializer

it fails with the exception:
undefined method `read_attribute_for_serialization' for #ActiveRecord::Relation:0x000000030bcf18

It's trying to use the SpecialSerializer on the list of Posts, not on each post. If I pass in serializer: ArraySerializer, it asks Post what its serializer is and uses the default PostSerializer instead of the SpecialSerializer I want to specify. I don't want to define Post#active_model_serializer because everywhere else I do want to use PostSerializer, not the SpecialSerializer.

I'm not sure how this should be fixed: letting ArraySerializer take an option specifying a serializer, or _render_option_json should know how to deal with enumerables, or if there's some better approach for my controller that I'm completely missing. Ideas?

Inline options does not override default options

class SomeController < ActionController::Base
  def some_action
    render json: @some_array, each_serializer: EvenBetterSerializer # Does not work, CustomSerializer will be used
  end

  def default_serializer_options
    { each_serializer: CustomSerializer }
  end
end

ArraySerializer tries to call serializable_hash on primitive objects

it's smart enough not to try to wrap non-serializable objects but when it does the actual serialization it doesn't re-check each item, and thus tries to serialize non-serializable objects resulting in errors like this:

NoMethodError (undefined method `serializable_hash' for "test3":String):

NoMethodError (undefined method `serializable_hash' for {:label=>"test3", :value=>1000012}:Hash):

Add coarse support for caching/cache expirey

Talked to Yehuda about this at Ruby on Ales last week.

We believe that it should be possible to provide a default caching/cache-expiry mechanism via AMS. Ideally, it would be able to support action caching for actions not requiring authentication and fragment caching (still really caching the whole action) keyed in part by user ID for authenticated users.

I've already started tinkering with this. Ultimately, I intend to submit the capability as a pull request.

I have a proof-of-concept that already has working cache writes via AMS -- though it's not on github just yet as I'm still recovering from RoA ;-). Plus I intend to write up a full failing test case for it to demonstrate the API that I'm suggesting. I hope to have something interesting to show in the next few days.

There should be an on demand feature for embedding associations

I would like a way to specify associations in the serializer that are only embedded when an option is set to do so.

For example:

render :json => @user, :include => [:comments]

Can't use Polymorphic Attributes

I am unsure of how to do this at this point, but here is my proposed solution.

has_one :reference, :polymorphic => true

Then at serialization time, instantiate a serialize based on the class name of the polymorphic object and call serialize with that object and scope.

I also thought you could have a ReferenceSerializer which would determine how to serialize whatever object is passed to it. However, I just realized that would break down if you had multiple polymorphic associations with the same name. IE a Todo can have a reference and an attachment can have a reference. Then you'd have to pass :serializer => TodoReferenceSerializer etc. Thus, I think the first choice is better.

I am not sure exactly how that code would work. I think a subclass of the HasOne association would do the trick. This method is also easily extendable to HasMany as well.

If you think this solution is correct, then I'll write the code for this as I need it for my app (again :D)

The ArraySerializer does not do what the documentation says it does

rendering an array of Deck objects, I get:

[{"deck": {...}}]

instead of what the documentation says it should be:

{"decks": [{...}]}

Selectively activate serializers on a per-controller basis

We would like to use active_model_serializers for controllers in our app that will be handling API requests. However, we may also have a need to serve JSON responses via non-API controllers (e.g. responding to Ajax requests). If serializers remain in effect for a model in all controllers, this could potentially lead to confusion or bugs.

Two ideas for accomplishing selective activation:

Require an explicit call to enable the use of serializers in a controller (e.g. use_json_serializers in the controller class definition)
A configuration option that could be set to disable the ActionController mix-in combined with an explicit inclusion (or convenience method as above)

`rails generate resource` fails on Rails 3.0.x

$ rails generate resource foo
(erb):1:in `template': undefined method `module_namespacing' for #<Rails::Generators::SerializerGenerator:0x007fc2341b6950> (NoMethodError)
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/erb.rb:838:in `eval'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p194/lib/ruby/1.9.1/erb.rb:838:in `result'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/file_manipulation.rb:111:in `block in template'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:54:in `call'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:54:in `render'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:63:in `block (2 levels) in invoke!'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:63:in `open'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:63:in `block in invoke!'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/empty_directory.rb:114:in `call'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/empty_directory.rb:114:in `invoke_with_conflict_check'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:61:in `invoke!'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions.rb:95:in `action'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/create_file.rb:26:in `create_file'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/actions/file_manipulation.rb:110:in `template'
        from /Users/alindeman/Documents/workspace/active_model_serializers/lib/generators/serializer/serializer_generator.rb:12:in `create_serializer_file'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/task.rb:22:in `run'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:118:in `invoke_task'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `block in invoke_all'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `each'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `map'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `invoke_all'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/group.rb:226:in `dispatch'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:109:in `invoke'
        from /Users/alindeman/Documents/workspace/active_model_serializers/lib/generators/resource_override.rb:8:in `add_serializer'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/task.rb:22:in `run'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:118:in `invoke_task'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `block in invoke_all'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `each'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `map'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/invocation.rb:124:in `invoke_all'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/group.rb:226:in `dispatch'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/thor-0.14.6/lib/thor/base.rb:389:in `start'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/generators.rb:163:in `invoke'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/commands/generate.rb:10:in `<top (required)>'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `block in require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `block in load_dependency'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:593:in `new_constants_in'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `load_dependency'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.10/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:239:in `require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.10/lib/rails/commands.rb:17:in `<top (required)>'
        from script/rails:6:in `require'
        from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

Rails 3.0.x does not have the module_namespacing method on Rails::Generators::NamedBase. Not sure what to do about it. Maybe just don't try to namespace under Rails 3.0?

There should be a way to ask for specific pages of associated elements

Add examples for undocumented :serializer option on has_one/has_many, :polymorphic option, etc.

Please add info about undocumented :serializer, etc. options on associations (has_one, has_many) to README. Thanks!

Cannot use STI w/has_many

How do you think we should do this?

I have this class structure, Message, Im < Message, Sms < Message, and Email < Message. How would I serialize all the messages?

I could loop over them myself, but we should make the library robust enough to support this use case.

For implementation, I guess it would be like the polymorphic has_one, but going up the class tree until we can find a serializer. Question is, where would it stop? It wouldn't make sense to go all the way up tree. Perhaps define a method on each ActiveModel instance to determine what to use to serialize it.

What do you think? I think this the last problem I'll run into for bit with this library :)

doesn't honor rails config include_root_in_json

setting rails include_root_in_json to false doesn't remove the json wrapper from this gem's output, so when you drop in this gem into a rails project that expects no wrappers on the outbound json, stuff breaks.

Could not find generator serializers:install.

I can't seem to get the rails generator to work. I added gem "active_model_serializers", :git => "http://github.com/josevalim/active_model_serializers.git" to my Gemfile and ran bundle install. This is what followed. Am I missing something obvious?

buch:test_app:% bundle install
Fetching http://github.com/josevalim/active_model_serializers.git
remote: Counting objects: 465, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (185/185), done.
remote: Total 465 (delta 283), reused 404 (delta 222)
Receiving objects: 100% (465/465), 71.14 KiB, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (283/283), done.
...
Using active_model_serializers (0.1.0) from http://github.com/josevalim/active_model_serializers.git (at master)
...
Your bundle is complete! Use `bundle show [gemname]` to see where a bundled gem is installed.

buch:test_app:% rails g

buch:test_app:% rails g serializers:install
Could not find generator serializers:install.

buch:test_app:% bundle exec rails g serializers:install
Could not find generator serializers:install.

buch:test_app:% bundle show active_model_serializers
/Users/patrick/.rbenv/versions/1.9.3-p0/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/bundler/gems/active_model_serializers-a0d02b43a59f

I'm using the latest rails, bundle, and ruby gems.

buch:test_app:% rails -v
Rails 3.2.1
buch:test_app:% bundle -v
Bundler version 1.0.21
buch:test_app:% gem -v      
1.8.15

Why recommending install from git; rather than versioned releases?

Custom helpers, cleaner way?

I want to create a time_ago_in_words version of most time values I am rendering in my json.

I want to specify which keys this happens for, and I think it belongs in the serializer/view layer (not in the model).

I was able to make a helper method that works like this:

  class VideoSerializer < MyBaseSerializer
    time_attributes :recorded_at, :uploaded_at
  end
  # example serializer.as_json => {:recorded_at_ago => "3 days", :uploaded_at_ago => "2 minutes"}

gist is here: https://gist.github.com/3177989

I am just wondering if there is a more concise way to accomplish this?

Active Model Serializer not sending id -> found a hack -> sends deprecation warnings

We're using :id in the attributes declaration. For some reason the serializer is sending over object_id instead of the id--the primary key. As a workaround, we are serializing :to_param which works and does not throw deprecation warnings, like retrieving _id. However, in another app, I am using :id and it works find. The only difference I can see is that in the broken app we are also including,

embed :ids, :include => true

to sideload the associated ids. Should this break :id for the top level object? Can anyone reproduce? I'll try to reproduce with a blank rails app asap.

Anonymous/inline association serializer?

When embedding associations, I often find the need to include just a subset of the attributes on the embedded object. For example, I might want to embed the Author object inside a Post, but only the author's id and full_name attributes (whereas, if requested by itself, the Author object might included other attributes such as created_at, posts_count, email etc).

This is how I currently do this:

class PostSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :id, :title, :body

  class PostAuthorSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
    attributes :id, :full_name
  end

  has_one :author, serializer: PostAuthorSerializer
end

This is okay, but feels a little bit hackish. I am wondering if there are any better patterns for accomplishing this. If not, one way I could think of is to add support for creating anonymous/inline serializers for embedded associations, such as:

class PostSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :id, :title, :body

  has_one :author do
    attributes :id, :full_name
  end

  # This is roughly equivalent to:
  # has_one :author, serializer: Class.new(ActiveModel::Serializer){ attributes(:id, :full_name) }
end

If there are interest in this and if I can get the green light from either @wycats or @josevalim I could submit a PR.

Add a default SetSerializer

Just as Arrays have a default ArraySerializerSupport module that gets included into them, Sets should likely have the same. Probably, the standard ArraySerializerSupport will work for both.

Cannot set :serializer, :root, etc options in default_serializer_options

class SomeController < ActionController::Base
  # ...

  def default_serializer_options
    {
      :serializer => SomeCustomSerializer, # This is ignored
      :each_serializer => SomeCustomSerializer # But this works
    }
  end
end

ActiveRecord::Relation should behave the same as an Array

Overview

Whenever you attempt to use an ActiveRecord::Relation object, the serializer fails to detect that it's an array of objects (and therefore, does not use the ArraySerializer).

Example

Failing but should work

@posts = Post.where("id is not null")
render json: @posts

>>

NoMethodError (undefined method `read_attribute_for_serialization' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x007fdc066561e0>):

Workaround

@posts = Post.where("id is not null").to_a
render json: @posts

-or-

@posts=Post.all
render json: @posts

Expected

I would expect for the ActiveRecord:Relation object to behave exactly like an Array object does.

Deserialization based on the same rules as serialization

One of the features I find interesting about this gem is the ability to turn off fields based on the current user. Is the same true for deserializing? Can the serializer control what fields are allowed on the round trip back to a model?

My preference would be that an exception is thrown if any funny business is going on and fields are passed back from the client that the user should have no access to.

The second level of serializers should still put their associations on the root

class PostSerializer < ApplicationSerializer
  embed :ids, :include => true
  has_many :comments
end

class CommentSerializer < ApplicationSerializer
  embed :ids, :include => true
  has_many :tags
end

The tags should be at the top root, not alongside comments.

Breaks `rails generate` on 3.0.x

Given a Rails app generated with:

$ rails _3.0.13_ new app

And this addition to the Gemfile (and bundle install):

gem 'active_model_serializers', git: 'git://github.com/josevalim/active_model_serializers.git'

... rails generate no longer operates correctly:

$ rails generate
/Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/whiny_nil.rb:48:in `method_missing': undefined method `config' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/bundler/gems/active_model_serializers-5beecd5947de/lib/active_model_serializers.rb:10:in `block in <class:Railtie>'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/railtie.rb:189:in `call'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/railtie.rb:189:in `each'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/railtie.rb:189:in `load_generators'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/application.rb:147:in `block in load_generators'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/application/railties.rb:11:in `each'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/application/railties.rb:11:in `all'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/application.rb:147:in `load_generators'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/generators.rb:319:in `load_generators_from_railties!'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/generators.rb:302:in `lookup!'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/generators.rb:207:in `help'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/commands/generate.rb:5:in `<top (required)>'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:242:in `require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:242:in `block in require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `block in load_dependency'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:597:in `new_constants_in'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:225:in `load_dependency'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/activesupport-3.0.13/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:242:in `require'
        from /Users/alindeman/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p194/gems/railties-3.0.13/lib/rails/commands.rb:17:in `<top (required)>'
        from script/rails:6:in `require'
        from script/rails:6:in `<main>'

custom attributes readme issue

in the Custom Serializers section of the readme, as written, Person.new.attributes will error on both options and scope not being defined.

It seems like the fix might be to move both methods full_name and attribtues into an ActiveModel::Serializer class rather than an ActiveRecord::Base. However then I get wrong number of arguments on the super(options) line, and full_name needs to be changed to use object.first_name.

Question marks in attribute names are serialized

Given

attributes :anonymous?

we get

"anonymous?": true

in the JSON.

In JS you have to write ...['anonymous?'] to access this, which is a bit cumbersome, and goes against JS convention.

I think it would be a reasonable default to drop the question mark. People who don't like it can still use :key.

I'm volunteering a PR. What do you think?

Use gem without overwriting render

Is it somehow possible to revert or even better skip this completely?

ActiveSupport.on_load(:action_controller) do
include ::ActionController::Serialization
end

I like the ease of serializers when I want to include the associations of a model but this is not always necessary in my controllers.

Imagine a backbone app where you would like to initialize your single page app with the main model which includes all associations
something like
new Backbone.View({model: <%= @model_serializer.to_json %>})

but in further requests, e.g. updates in your model, you would want from your controller only the attributes of the model (fields of its own table)

I can skip the serializer in my controller if I call render like this
render json: model.to_json

but I thought it would be nice to be able to globally turn it off.

what do you think?

If there is no serializer, model#to_json should still work

If I try to render :json => inst where inst does not have an associated serializer, I get an exception instead of to_json being used.

Changing Association Names

Let's say that you have two association for the same object. One is for internal use only and the other is public. It doesn't make sense to return the 'public_association' in the serializable hash. There should be some way to change the association name and still have the id/object concept.

You could do something like this:

class RecordSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  has_many :public_things, :as => :things, :serializer => ThingSerializer
end

I will gladly write the code for this as well since I need this functionality for my app!

Generator complains about test_unit

When running the serializer generator, it will complain about test_unit:

$ rails g serializer Customer
create  app/serializers/customer_serializer.rb
error  test_unit [not found]

has_many associations blow up if the collection is nil

Title says it all. You get an UndefinedMethodError, map for NilClass when it's serialized. How should this be handled?

This is only a problem no ActiveRecord associations since they return [] if empty. The library should be robust enough to handle this case. I think that just putting "comments": [] would be ok in the vast majority of situations.

issues with ActiveRecord 3.2.6 -- ActiveRecord::Relation

In the latest Rails release they change the order in which delegation happens for ActiveRecord::Relation objects (rails/rails@cd1be1a#activerecord/lib/active_record/relation/delegation.rb)

Now, when serializing an ActiveRecord relation, the root is inserted into each element of the relation, instead of at the top.

example:

before:

{"articles": [{}, {}, {}]}

now:

[{"articles":{}}, {"articles":{}}, {"articles":{}}]

serializer does not reload when changed in development

Creating a serializer with just an id attribute, starting Rails, adding another attribute to a serializer, and then reloading, results in only the id attribute showing up. This is using master of about an hour ago. This is with Rails 3.2.8.

Is there a way to reduce the number of DB queries for relation serialization?

a_m_s appears to make a separate SQL call to retrieve the relevant relation object for each object being serialized, is there a way to make this more performant within the gem?

Serializers should be initialized with options

Serializers should have a third initialization argument (options) which would be the render options.

License Missing

Unless I'm looking in the wrong place, it doesn't seem that there's any indication of a license to use/redistribute this code. Could we get some clarification on license?

Awkward to use association objects and association ids at the same time.

I'm using this project in my application. I have classes that should return serialized objects and some that only only return the id's. At this point you can get around it by saying attributes :account_id then specifying has_one or has_many. I'm proposing a change to the API that would make it easier for this situation to work. Here is my proposed change:

class UserSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  has_many :contacts, :embed => :objects
  belongs_to :account, :embed => :id
end

The embed method could set the preference, but I'm not sure how that would work. I am interested in adding this functionality and will gladly write a pull request if you guys thing this is a good thing to do.

Generator accepts unused field:type options

The serializer generator appears to take unused types for fields (attributes?):

rails generate serializer NAME [field:type field:type] [options]

Is this possibly an artifact from the model/resource generator that doesn't make sense for the serializer generator?

mongoid support

I using mongoid in my project and I really want use active_model_serializers to build API. It was easy to add mongoid support

https://github.com/lefty313/active_model_serializers/commit/8281a3529a3d2fec4ca989fd5cec25ef9ddb6e0a

Are you interested in support for mongoid? If yes what will be good testcase for it ?

ps: Test are passing but in this commit I didn't change .gemspec to require mongoid so they will be failing

Make it possible to do conditional includes

The original plan for the include! API was to be able to do something like the following:

def include_associations!
  include! :comments
  include! :user if admin?
end

However, the current internals require an options hash and passes in a node.

Test and document a public API that supports overriding include_associations! with a series of include! calls.

Is the existence of 'current_user' mandatory?

I'm creating a Rails app from scratch and still don't have any authentication mechanism in place.
I had to specify a current_user method in the controller in order to produce json from the active_model_serializer, otherwise i get an exception:
NoMethodError in EntriesController#index

undefined method `current_user' for #EntriesController:0x007fc14cb4a8d8

Respect controller namespace when looking up serializers

I have name-spaced my API controllers like so:

module EngineName
  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base; end

  class API::V1::APIController < ActionController::API; end

  class API::V1::PostsController < API::V1::APIController
    def index
      @posts = Post.all
      render json: @posts
    end
  end
end

Since each API version might serialize the models differently, ideally the serializers should be namespaced accordingly like so:

module EngineName
  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base; end

  class API::V1::PostSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
    attributes :id, :title, :body
  end

  class API::V1::APIController < ActionController::API; end

  class API::V1::PostsController < API::V1::APIController
    def index
      @posts = Post.all
      render json: @posts, serializer: PostSerializer # resolves to ::EngineName::API::V1::PostSerializer
    end
  end
end

This gets quite repetitive when you have to do it for all your controllers. I am wondering if it is possible to take into account of the controller's scope when looking up a serializer. In the example above, render json: @posts should these in order (via controller.class.const_get :PostSerializer):

::EngineName::API::V1::PostsController::PostSerializer
::EngineName::API::V1::PostSerializer
::EngineName::API::PostSerializer
::EngineName::PostSerializer
::PostSerializer

(I also thought about overriding default_serializer_options in APIController, but that won't work as the options are merged after the serializer lookup, so def default_serializer_options; { serializer: SomeSerializer }; end won't work.)

XML serialization

What would it take to support XML as well?