Ember-Serialize — Generate ember models from Rails serializers

Ember-Serialize intelligently updates your Ember.js models from your serializers. It uses introspection to keep model names correct. It also tries to be unobtrusive, and will not overwrite or replace anything you have in your ember model.

Inspiration for this gem came from this article by Matt Rogish. Instead of creating a JSON schema that is parsed by Ember.js, I chose to directly edit the Ember.js models.

In your Gemfile:

gem 'ember_serialize'

• Rails 3.2, tested on 3.2, 4.0 and 4.1
• ActiveModel::Serializers 0.8.x is required. 0.9.x was decoupled from ActiveRecord and no longer exports a schema. Support for AMS 0.10.x is planned.

Ember-Serialize provides a rake task that parses your serializers and updates your Ember.js models. For basic usage, simply call:

rake db:schema:ember

By default EmberSerialize will look inside your app/javascripts directory for your Ember application. Furthermore, it will look below that for a models directory to find your Ember models.

If your Ember app is somewhere else, use an intitializer to change it (e.g. config/initializers/ember_serialize.rb):

EmberSerialize::Serializer.javascripts_dir = "path/to/ember/app/dir"

If models is not immediately under the above javascripts directory, set it also:

EmberSerialize::Serializer.models_dir = "path/to/ember/models/dir"

Relative paths will be with respect to the directory of your Rails app (where you run the rake task.)

If EmberSerialize fails to detect your Ember application name set it with an intializer:

EmberSerialize::Serializer.app_name = "RubyHeroes"

ES will only update existing files that have ES start/end markers in them:

EmberSerialize.Post = DS.Model.extend
  # ember_serialize:start
  author: DS.belongsTo('user',{inverse: 'post'}),
  # ember_serialize:end

  comments: DS.hasMany('comments')

Things to keep in mind:

• Any javascript outside the markers will be left as is. So, in the above example, comments will not only be left as is, it will not be added inside either.
• Any line inside the markers will not be changed. So you can hand edit any line and it will not be overwritten. In the above example, author has had inverse added to it, and it will not be changed.

To inject the ember_serialize markers in existing files, pass in the :inject parameter. To only inject tags in a specific model, use inject:model_name. EmberScript will match the passed name with the file name.

rake db:schema:ember[:inject]
rake db:schema:ember[inject:post]

ES will not create models unless you pass the :create parameter:

rake db:schema:ember[:create]

ES defaults to async: true for any new association. To prevent this, pass async:false to the rake task:

rake db:schema:ember[async:false]

If ES finds a post_id parameter, and a post association, it will by default convert it to a DS.belongsTo association. It will also reflect on the assocation and use the receiving class inside the belongsTo call. For instance, if a Post has an author_id parameter, an author association, which lead to a User class, ES will insert the following line:

author: DS.belongsTo('user'),

To prevent this, and in this case include authorId, use an as_is setting inside your model:

EmberSerialize.Post = DS.Model.extend
  # ember_serialize:start
  # ember_serialize:as_is authorId
  authorId: DS.attr('integer')
  # ember_serialize:end

Similar to the Belongs to case, ES will reflect on the association and use the receiving class in the declaration:

EmberSerialize.Manager = DS.Model.extend
  employees: hasMany('users')

To ignore any parameter, use an ignore setting:

EmberSerialize.Post = DS.Model.extend
  # ember_serialize:start
  # ember_serialize:ignore authorId
  # ember_serialize:end

In settings, you can use either underScore or camel_case:

  # ember_serialize:ignore authorId
  # is the same as
  # ember_serialize:ignore author_id

Remember, when you are passing multiple arguments to rake, DO NOT USE SPACES!

This will work:

rake db:schema:ember[:create,async:false]

THIS WILL NOT:

rake db:schema:ember[:create, async:false]

• Rails
• ActiveModel::Serializers

• Noel Peden

• September 29, 2014: 0.0.9 - Inject markers (all or one), set app name
• September 8, 2014: 0.0.8 - Reflect & singularize hasMany assocation
• September 6, 2014: 0.0.7 - Translate types
• September 5, 2014: 0.0.6 - Force ignore of id
• September 5, 2014: 0.0.5 - Skip missing models
• September 5, 2014: 0.0.4 - Railtie for proper inclusion
• August 27, 2014: 0.0.2 - Fix async detection: defaults to true
• August 27, 2014: 0.0.1 - Initial release