Declaring api templates for any class! (no orms)

Declaring API templates for any class! (no ORMs)

In fact acts_as_api can be used with any class to be rendered as json or xml.

You only have to do two things:

• extend the class with ActsAsApi::Base
• implement a method called model_name to tell acts_as_api how the model should be called

Here is a short example, based in this gist

require 'rubygems'
require 'active_model'
require 'active_support'
require 'json'
require 'acts_as_api'

class User
  extend ActsAsApi::Base

  attr_accessor :first_name, :last_name, :age, :active

  def initialize(opts)
    @tasks = []
    opts.each do |k,v|
      self.send :"#{k}=", v
    end
  end

  def model_name
    'user'
  end

  acts_as_api

  api_accessible :name_only do |t|
    t.add :first_name
    t.add :last_name
  end
end

# create a user
user = User.new({ :first_name => 'Luke', :last_name => 'Skywalker', :age => 25, :active => true  })
# get the user data based on the passed api template
response = user.as_api_response(:name_only)
# show it to the world
puts response.inspect
# => {:first_name=>"Luke", :last_name=>"Skywalker"}