Cereal box.¶ ↑

Serialization filters for active record.

Ever have a controller that looks like this?

class ThingController < ActionController::Base
  respond_to :json

  def show
    @thing = Thing.find(params[:id])
    @thing_json = @thing.as_json 
    @thing_json[:other_things][:name] = @thing.other_thing.name
    @thing_json[:other_related_thing][:name] = @thing.other_related_thing.name

    respond_with(@thing_json)
  end
end

Specifically adding additional related information from other models into the serialized hash of an object? Well, no more!

Doesn’t this look better?

class ThingController < ActionController::Base
  respond_to :json

  def show
    @thing = Thing.find(params[:id])

    respond_with(OtherRelatedThingFilter.new(ThingFilter.new(@thing))
  end
end

It’s simple! Just define a module that includes cereal_box and implements an attributes method.

class OtherThingFilter
  include CerealBox

  def attributes(base)
    { :name => base.other_thing.name }
  end
end

Filters support as_xml, as_json and serializable_hash.

Cereal Box is Copyright © 2011 Christopher Meiklejohn. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.

The cereal_box gem was written by Christopher Meiklejohn from Swipely, Inc..