Alba for Rails

While Alba is NOT designed for Rails specifically, you can definitely use Alba with Rails. This document describes in detail how to use Alba with Rails to be more productive.

Initializer

You might want to add some configurations to initializer file such as alba.rb with something like below:

# alba.rb
Alba.backend = :active_support
Alba.inflector = :active_support

You can also use :oj_rails for backend if you prefer using Oj.

Alba 2.2 introduced new Rails integration so that you don't have to add initializer file for setting inflector. You still need to add initializer file if you want to set backend or configure inflector with something different from active_support.

Rendering JSON

You can render JSON with Rails in two ways. One way is to pass JSON String.

render json: FooResource.new(foo).serialize

But you can also render JSON passing Alba::Resource object. Rails automatically calls to_json on a resource.

render json: FooResource.new(foo)

Note that almost all options given to this render are ignored. The only exceptions are layout, prefixes, template and status.

# This `only` option is ignored
render json: FooResource.new(foo), only: [:id]

# This is OK
render json: FooResource.new(foo), status: 200

Shorthand for rendering JSON with Alba

Now you can render JSON with shorthand.

First, using render json: serialize(target) renders JSON for given target object. You can pass with: SomeSerializer option to render with SomeSerializer in this case. If you skip with option Alba tries to find the correct serialize automatically.

There is a shorter version: render_serialized_json(target). It also accepts with option.

It's recommended to use with option now since it cannot automatically find correct serializers sometimes.