Class: ActionController::API
- Inherits:
-
Metal
- Object
- Metal
- ActionController::API
- Extended by:
- Compabitility
- Defined in:
- lib/rails-api/action_controller/api.rb
Overview
API Controller is a lightweight version of ActionController::Base
, created for applications that don’t require all functionality that a complete Rails controller provides, allowing you to create faster controllers for example for API only applications.
An API Controller is different from a normal controller in the sense that by default it doesn’t include a number of features that are usually required by browser access only: layouts and templates rendering, cookies, sessions, flash, assets, and so on. This makes the entire controller stack thinner and faster, suitable for API applications. It doesn’t mean you won’t have such features if you need them: they’re all available for you to include in your application, they’re just not part of the default API Controller stack.
By default, only the ApplicationController in a Rails application inherits from ActionController::API
. All other controllers in turn inherit from ApplicationController.
A sample controller could look like this:
class PostsController < ApplicationController
def index
@posts = Post.all
render json: @posts
end
end
Request, response and parameters objects all work the exact same way as ActionController::Base
.
Renders
The default API Controller stack includes all renderers, which means you can use render :json
and brothers freely in your controllers. Keep in mind that templates are not going to be rendered, so you need to ensure your controller is calling either render
or redirect
in all actions.
def show
@post = Post.find(params[:id])
render json: @post
end
Redirects
Redirects are used to move from one action to another. You can use the redirect
method in your controllers in the same way as ActionController::Base
. For example:
def create
redirect_to root_url and return if
# do stuff here
end
Adding new behavior
In some scenarios you may want to add back some functionality provided by ActionController::Base
that is not present by default in ActionController::API
, for instance MimeResponds
. This module gives you the respond_to
and respond_with
methods. Adding it is quite simple, you just need to include the module in a specific controller or in ApplicationController
in case you want it available to your entire app:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::API
include ActionController::MimeResponds
end
class PostsController < ApplicationController
respond_to :json, :xml
def index
@posts = Post.all
respond_with @posts
end
end
Quite straightforward. Make sure to check ActionController::Base
available modules if you want to include any other functionality that is not provided by ActionController::API
out of the box.
Defined Under Namespace
Modules: Compabitility
Constant Summary collapse
- MODULES =
[ HideActions, UrlFor, Redirecting, Rendering, Renderers::All, ConditionalGet, RackDelegation, ForceSSL, DataStreaming, # Before callbacks should also be executed the earliest as possible, so # also include them at the bottom. AbstractController::Callbacks, # Append rescue at the bottom to wrap as much as possible. Rescue, # Add instrumentations hooks at the bottom, to ensure they instrument # all the methods properly. Instrumentation ]
Class Method Summary collapse
-
.without_modules(*modules) ⇒ Object
Shortcut helper that returns all the ActionController::API modules except the ones passed in the argument:.
Methods included from Compabitility
allow_forgery_protection=, asset_host=, asset_path=, assets_dir=, cache_store, cache_store=, helper, helper_method, helpers_path=, javascripts_dir=, page_cache_directory=, perform_caching=, relative_url_root=, stylesheets_dir=
Class Method Details
.without_modules(*modules) ⇒ Object
Shortcut helper that returns all the ActionController::API modules except the ones passed in the argument:
class MetalController
ActionController::API.without_modules(:Redirecting, :DataStreaming).each do |left|
include left
end
end
This gives better control over what you want to exclude and makes it easier to create an api controller class, instead of listing the modules required manually.
116 117 118 119 120 121 122 |
# File 'lib/rails-api/action_controller/api.rb', line 116 def self.without_modules(*modules) modules = modules.map do |m| m.is_a?(Symbol) ? ActionController.const_get(m) : m end MODULES - modules end |