ActiveResource JSON Patch

Why? Because the ActiveResource (Rails 3) JSON format is broken, and this gem will fix it until ActiveResource gets patched.

Imagine you fetch a book over ActiveResource.

@book = Book.find '2001-space-odyssey'

The JSON that came to you looked like this:

{
  "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey",
  "id": "2001-space-odyseey",
  "genres": [
    {
      "name": "Fiction",
      "id": "fiction"
    },
    {
      "name": "Science Fiction",
      "id": "science-fiction"
    }
  ],
  "author": nil
}

So far, so good.

Now, let's update the author attribute and save it.

@book.author = "Arthur C. Clarke"
@book.save

Great! But wait, let's inspect the JSON that it sent to the server on save:

{
  "book": {
    "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey",
    "id": "2001-space-odyseey",
    "genres": [
      {
        "genre": {
          "name": "Fiction",
          "id": "fiction"
        }
      },
      {
        "genre": {
          "name": "Science Fiction",
          "id": "science-fiction"
        }
      }
    ],
    "author": "Arthur C. Clarke"
  }
}

Not cool! By default, ActiveResource::Base.include_root_in_json is true - which is fine. Except it doesn't just include the "book" root, it added "genre" roots to all of the "genres"! This will completely fuck up your document.

Step 1: Install this gem, activeresource_json_patch: either add it to your Gemfile and bundle install, or simply gem install activeresource_json_patch

Step 2: Require it in your codebase. If you included this in a Rails project via a Gemfile, then you're good to go. Otherwise, require activeresource_json_patch somewhere in your code.

Now, with the gem installed and loaded, were you to repeat the above steps, the JSON it will would send back would not inlude the superfluous "genre" roots:

{
  "book": {
    "title": "2001: A Space Odyssey",
    "id": "2001-space-odyseey",
    "genres": [
      {
        "name": "Fiction",
        "id": "fiction"
      },
      {
        "name": "Science Fiction",
        "id": "science-fiction"
      }
    ],
    "author": "Arthur C. Clarke"
  }
}

None. This is PUBLIC DOMAIN. Do ANYTHING!