# roar-rails

_Makes using Roar's representers in your Rails app fun._

Roar is a framework for parsing and rendering REST documents. For a better overview about representers please check the [roar repository](https://github.com/apotonick/roar#roar).

Roar-rails gives you conventions and convenient access to a lot of Roar's functionality within your Rails app.

## Features

* Rendering with responders
* Parsing incoming documents
* URL helpers in representers
* Better tests
* Autoloading
* Generators

This gem works with all Rails >= 3.x.


## Generators

The generator will create the representer modules in `app/representers` for you.

Here's an example.

```shell
rails g representer Band id name
```

This will create the file `app/representers/band_representer.rb` with the following content,

```ruby
  module BandRepresenter
    include Roar::Representer::JSON

    property :id
    property :name
  end
```

You can change the format (e.g. XML), and pass arbitrary options to customize the generated representer. For all available options, just run

```shell
rails g representer
```


## Rendering with #respond_with

roar-rails provides a number of baked-in rendering methods.


### Conventional Rendering

Easily render resources using representers with the built-in responder.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController
  include Roar::Rails::ControllerAdditions
  respond_to :json

  def show
    singer = Singer.find_by_id(params[:id])
    respond_with singer
  end
end
```

The representer name will be infered from the passed model class (e.g. a `Singer` instance gets the `SingerRepresenter`). If the passed model is a collection it will be extended using a representer. The representer name will be computed from the controller name (e.g. a `SingersController` uses the `SingersRepresenter`).

Need to use a representer with a different name than your model? You may always pass it in using the `:represent_with` option:

```ruby
respond_with singers, :represent_with => MusicianCollectionRepresenter
end
```

### Represents Configuration

If you don't want to use conventions or pass representers you can configure them on the class level using `::represents`. This will also call `respond_to` for you.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController
  represents :json, Musician
```
This will use the `MusicianRepresenter` for models and `MusiciansRepresenter` for representing collections.

Note that `::represents` also allows fine-tuning.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController
  represents :json, :entity => MusicianRepresenter, :collection => MusicianCollectionRepresenter
```

You might pass strings as representer names to `::represents`, they will be constantized at run-time when needed.

## Rendering with #render

In place of `#respond_with`, you can also use `#render` to serialize objects using representers.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController
  include Roar::Rails::ControllerAdditions
  include Roar::Rails::ControllerAdditions::Render

  def show
    singer = Singer.find_by_id(params[:id])
    render json: singer
  end
end
```

### Old API Support

If you don't want to write a dedicated representer for a collection of items (highly recommended, thou) but rather use a representer for each item, use the `:represent_items_with` option.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController

  def index
    singers = Musician.find(:all)
    respond_with singers, :represent_items_with => SingerRepresenter
  end
end
```


## Parsing incoming documents

In `#create` and `#update` actions it is often necessary to parse the incoming representation and map it to a model instance. Use the `#consume!` method for this.

```ruby
class SingersController < ApplicationController
  respond_to :json

  def create
    singer = Singer.new
    consume!(singer)

    respond_with singer
  end
end
```

The `consume!` call will roughly do the following.

```ruby
singer.
  extend(SingerRepresenter)
  from_json(request.body)
```

So, `#consume!` helps you figuring out the representer module and reading the incoming document.

Note that it respects settings from `#represents`. It uses the same mechanics known from `#respond_with` to choose a representer.

```ruby
consume!(singer, :represent_with => MusicianRepresenter)
```

## Using Decorators

If you prefer roar's decorator approach over extend, just go for it. roar-rails will figure out automatically which represent strategy to use. Be sure to use roar >= 0.11.17.

```ruby
class SingerRepresenter < Roar::Decorator
  include Roar::Representer::JSON

  property :name

  link :self do
    singer_url(represented)
  end
end
```

In decorators' link blocks you currently have to use `represented` to get the actual represented model (this is `self` in module representers).


## Passing Options

Both rendering and consuming support passing user options to the representer.

With `#respond_with`, any additional options will be passed to `to_json` (or whatever format you're using).

```ruby
respond_with @singer, :current_user => current_user
```

Same goes with `#consume!`, passing options to `from_json`.

```ruby
consume! Singer.new, :current_user => current_user
```

Note: If you pass in options to a representer, you must process them youself.  For rendering, use `:getter` in the representer.

```ruby
property :username, getter: lambda { |args| args[:current_user].name }
```

That'll render the `current_user`'s name as the `username` property.

More docs about passing and processing option can be found [here](https://github.com/apotonick/representable/#passing-options).


## URL Helpers

Any URL helpers from the Rails app are automatically available in representers.

```ruby
module FruitRepresenter
  include Roar::Representer::JSON
  include Roar::Representer::Feature::Hypermedia

  link :self do
    fruit_url self
  end
end
```
To get the hyperlinks up and running, please make sure to set the right _host name_ in your environment files (config/environments):

```ruby
config.representer.default_url_options = {:host => "127.0.0.1:3000"}
```

Attention: If you are using representers from a gem your Rails URL helpers might not work in these modules. This is due to a [loading order problem](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/rubyonrails-core/5tG5unZ8jDQ) in Rails. As a workaround, don't require the representers in the gem but load them as lately as possible, usually it works when you require in the controller. We are working on fixing that problem.

## Representing Formats Exclusively

By default, roar-rails will extend/decorate any model passed to `respond_with` for any request format. When adding roar-rails to a legacy project, you might want to restrict roar-rails' representing and fall back to the old behavior for certain formats. This can be configured both globally and on a per action basis.

To restrict representing globally to a particular format you can set the `config.representer.represented_formats` in your environment's configuration to an array of formats.  For example the following will only represent hal and json requests.

```ruby
config.representer.represented_formats = [:hal, :json]
```

The global configuration (or lack thereof) can be overridden by supplying the `:represented_formats` array when calling `respond_with`.  The following will only represent `@resource` for the hal format in the `show` action. For any other format, it will expose the resource using Rails' old behavior.


```ruby
class MyController < ApplicationController
  def show
    ...
    respond_with @resource, :represented_formats => [:hal]
  end
end
```

You can entirely suppress roar-rails in `respond_with` by passing in an empty array.

```ruby
class MyController < ApplicationController
  def show
    ...
    respond_with @resource, :represented_formats => []
  end
end
```

## Testing

## Autoloading

Put your representers in `app/representers` and they will be autoloaded by Rails. Also, frequently used modules as media representers and features don't need to be required manually.

## Rails 4.1 + HAL

**Note**: this is a temporary work-around, we're trying to fix that in Rails/roar-rails itself [May 2014].

Rails 4.1 expects you to manually register a global HAL renderer, or `respond_with` will throw the exception `ActionController::MissingRenderer (No renderer defined for format: hal)`.

One fix is to add this to `config/initializers/mime_types.rb` right below `Mime::Type.register 'application/hal+json', :hal`:

```ruby
ActionController::Renderers.add :hal do |obj, options|
  self.content_type ||= Mime[:hal]
  obj.to_hal
end
```

## Contributors

* [Railslove](http://www.railslove.de) and especially Michael Bumann [bumi] have heavily supported development of roar-rails ("resource :singers").

[responders]: https://github.com/plataformatec/responders

## License

Roar-rails is released under the [MIT License](http://www.opensource.org/licenses/MIT).