active_model_serializers with PORO (Plain-Old Ruby Object)

Recently, I worked on a Rails API project.

In the project, I fetched external data and made POROs which were compliant with active_model_serializers with the data.
Then our APIs returned the POROs serialized.

Today, I introduce the development flow a little bit.

Environment

Rails 6.0.0.beta3
active_model_serializers 0.10.9
factory_bot 5.0.2

Directory structure

app/models
- POROs
app/serializers
- Serializers
app/controllers
- Endpoints

Model

As an example, let’s consider Image model which has a URL and size information.

active_model_serializers provides ActiveModelSerializers::Model for POROs like this, which is so easy to use.

If you need to deal with a more complicated case, you would be able to implement and use a model which is compliant with this specification instead.

# app/models/image.rb
class Image < ActiveModelSerializers::Model
  attributes :url, :size
end

# app/models/image/size.rb
class Image::Size < ActiveModelSerializers::Model
  attributes :width, :height
end

Serializer

# app/serializers/image_serializer.rb
class ImageSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :url, :type
  has_one :size
end

# app/serializers/image/size_serializer.rb
class Image::SizeSerializer < ActiveModel::Serializer
  attributes :width, :height
end

Defining relations like has_one, we can use include option conveniently on endpoints.

For example, render json: image, include: '*' returns JSON including size and render json: image, include: '' returns JSON without size.

Controller

We can use serializers easily in controllers. All we have to do is create a model instance and pass it to render method.

Then active_model_serializers finds a suitable serializer for an instance given and serialize it, and the response returns.

# app/controllers/v1/images_controller.rb
module V1
  class ImagesController < ApplicationController
    def show
      render json: image, include: params[:include]
    end

    private

    def image
      @image ||= Image.new(image_attrs)
    end

    def image_attrs
      @image_attrs ||= fetch_data_somehow # Fetch external data
    end
  end
end

Testing

When testing ActiveRecord models, we can use factory_bot and make the factories like:

FactoryBot.define do
  factory :user do
    name { Faker::Name.name }
  end
end

Usage:

> user = FactoryBot.create(:user)

But in this case, FactoryBot#create does not work well because there is no store (in addition, it’s not needed to store them).

Plus, ActiveModelSerializers::Model is based on ActiveModel, so the initializer requires a hash named attributes.

If we omit the argument attributes, attributes = {} will be given as the default, then serialization does not work well expectedly.

# spec/factories/images.rb
FactoryBot.define do
  factory :image do
    url { Faker::Internet.url }
    size { build(:image_size) }
  end
end

# spec/factories/image/sizes.rb
FactoryBot.define do
  factory :image_size, class: 'Image::Size' do
    width { rand(100..500) }
    height { rand(100..500) }
  end
end

Usage:

> image = FactoryBot.create(:image)
=> NoMethodError: undefined method `save!`...

> image = FactoryBot.build(:image)
> image.attributes
=> {}

> image.to_json
=> "{}"

factory_bot provides initialize_with to override initializers.

Also, it provides skip_create to skip creation.

# spec/factories/images.rb
FactoryBot.define do
  factory :image do
    skip_create
    initalize_with { new(attributes) }

    url { Faker::Internet.url }
    size { build(:image_size) }
  end
end

# spec/factories/image/sizes.rb
FactoryBot.define do
  factory :image_size, class: 'Image::Size' do
    skip_create
    initalize_with { new(attributes) }

    width { rand(100..500) }
    height { rand(100..500) }
  end
end

Usage:

> image = FactoryBot.create(:image)
=> #<Image:...> The result is the same as one from `build`🙌

> image = FactoryBot.build(:image)
> image.attributes
=> { "url" => ..., "size" => ... }

> image.to_json
=> "{\"url\":...,\"size\":...}"

To avoid writing initialize_with and skip_create many times, I eventually prepared a specific DSL like:

if defined?(FactoryBot)
  module FactoryBot
    module Syntax
      module Default
        class DSL
          # Custom DSL for ActiveModelSerializers::Model
          # Original: https://github.com/thoughtbot/factory_bot/blob/v5.0.2/lib/factory_bot/syntax/default.rb#L15-L26
          def serializers_model_factory(name, options = {}, &block)
            factory = Factory.new(name, options)
            proxy = FactoryBot::DefinitionProxy.new(factory.definition)
            if block_given?
              proxy.instance_eval do
                skip_create
                initialize_with { new(attributes) }
                instance_eval(&block)
              end
            end
            FactoryBot.register_factory(factory)

            proxy.child_factories.each do |(child_name, child_options, child_block)|
              parent_factory = child_options.delete(:parent) || name
              serializers_model_factory(child_name, child_options.merge(parent: parent_factory), &child_block)
            end
          end
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

The factory implementation turned out like:

# spec/factories/images.rb
FactoryBot.define do
  serializers_model_factory :image do
    url { Faker::Internet.url }
    size { build(:image_size) }
  end
end

Then we can use it in specs easily like:

# spec/serializers/image_serializer_spec.rb
require 'rails_helper'

RSpec.describe ImageSerializer, type: :serializer do
  let(:resource) { ActiveModelSerializers::SerializableResource.new(model, options) }
  let(:model) { build(:image) }
  let(:options) { { include: '*' } }

  describe '#url' do
    subject { resource.serializable_hash[:url] }

    it { is_expected.to eq model.url }
  end
  ...
end

Summary

We can use active_model_serializers without ActiveRecord easily.

Blog

active_model_serializers with PORO (Plain-Old Ruby Object)

Hideaki Ishii

Environment

Directory structure

Model

Serializer

Controller

Testing

Summary

References

Join Our Newsletter. No Spam, Only the good stuff.

Related