REST API with Ruby on Rails and ReactJS

Question

I'm currently working on building a simple REST API using Ruby on Rails. I noticed that a lot of the things I did were a bit redundant, especially the models. Just to clarify: I want this to be a REST API which returns JSON, without any views (I want to be able to access it from different applications, mainly Apache Cordova). Within Cordova I wanted to use ReactJS.

Sadly, my Rails controllers all look like this:

class StudentsController < ApplicationController def index @students = Student.all render json: @students end def create if @student.present? render nothing: true, status: :conflict else @student = Student.new(student_params) if @student.save render json: @student else render nothing: true, status: :bad_request end end end def show @student = Student.find(params[:id]) render json: @student.classes end def update @student = Student.find(params[:id]) @student.update(student_params) if @student.save render json: @student else render nothing: true, status: :bad_request end end def delete if Student.destroy(params[:id]) render nothing: true, status: :ok else render nothing: true, status: :bad_request end end private def student_params params.permit(:first_name, :last_name, :grade_id) end end 

I literally got three of them with only the classname changed. Is there a smarter way to organize this? I may have to change override some functions, but some functions will be identical.

I also have a few database relationships, for example grades and classes to teachers and students. Does anyone have some information about best practices for this? I seem to be creating a lot of "relationship" tables for these many-to-many relationships.

For the RoR Rest API Part I found this tutorial.

Answer 1

I think this is an interesting idea, although I haven't personally used it when building REST APIs.

Here's some code which shows how it could be done.

I tested the following code to ensure that it works. To test it:

1. make a todo model with a :name column
2. add resources :todos to the routes
3. visit localhost:3000/todos

...

# app/controllers/todos_controller.rb class TodosController < ApplicationController include GenericController RecordClass = Todo def record_params params.require(:todo).permit(:name) end end 

You can see that there are only two points of customization in each controller. You'll have to specify the RecordClass and your secure parameters method.

The following "generic controller" was built using Rails' default scaffold controller. You can customize it to follow your own default controller logic.

# app/controllers/generic_controller.rb module GenericController before_action :set_instance, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy] def index @records = RecordClass.all end def show end def new @record = RecordClass.new end def edit end def create @record = RecordClass.new(record_params) respond_to do |format| if @record.save format.html { redirect_to @record, notice: '#{RecordClass} was successfully created.' } format.json { render :show, status: :created, location: @record } else format.html { render :new } format.json { render json: @record.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity } end end end def update respond_to do |format| if @record.update(record_params) format.html { redirect_to @record, notice: '#{RecordC;ass} was successfully updated.' } format.json { render :show, status: :ok, location: @record } else format.html { render :edit } format.json { render json: @record.errors, status: :unprocessable_entity } end end end def destroy @record.destroy respond_to do |format| format.html { redirect_to records_url, notice: #{'RecordClass} was successfully destroyed.' } format.json { head :no_content } end end private def set_record @record = RecordClass.find(params[:id]) end