CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
9TrSl9IAlaLfDmffagsw
9TrSl9IAlaLfDmffagsw

Reputation: 405

Integrating Rails APIs with Forms

I've read quite a few articles on good design for Rails APIs. However, I can't seem to find what I'm trying to do. And it's different enough that I'm not sure what to do.

So this Rails site has forms for generating various records for my various tables. It all works fine. No problem there. This is all admin-level stuff.

However, a few of these forms need to be also be available as an API. Right now my APIs work fine but it's poor design (I think). Currently the user will make an API request to do some action and pass some information in (i.e. add record to Foo).

My method inside the API, special_new_foo, more or less duplicates my create inside the foo controller that a form would route to. Is there a way I can reuse my standard create method? The API would then just check for good data, etc. and pass the information onto the controller...

I was thinking about just making an HTTP request to the local server on the machine (which is basically how the forms work, except they're two separate machines). Is this good practice?

Thanks!

Upvotes: 1

Views: 33

Answers (1)

dre-hh
dre-hh

Reputation: 8044

One option is to allow you controller to respond with different formats, depending on the request. I think this is what rails generates on scaffolding. However i barely saw any real world app doing this. See also my answer to Is it necessary to build a separate API endpoint for mobile apps to access a Rails web app?

A better solution is to make an extra ServiceObject or FormObject dealing with business logic of your controllers and reuse this object in both endpoints see http://blog.codeclimate.com/blog/2012/10/17/7-ways-to-decompose-fat-activerecord-models/

Upvotes: 1

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