Question

I have a very basic API in my app which also has an index page to allow testing/demonstrating various API functions.

Due to this index HTML page all the functions should be able to respond in either HTML (which just re-renders the index page with flash messages attached) or JSON (which just sends back a simple status/message object).

Each function currently looks a little like this…

def do_stuff

  if params['stuff']

    begin
      Helper.do_stuff params['stuff']
    rescue Exception => ex
      msg = ex.message
      status = 'error'

      flash[:error] = msg
    else
      msg = 'Stuff done'
      status = 'success'

      flash[:success] = msg
    end

  else
    msg = 'No stuff provided'
    status = 'error'

    flash[:error] = msg
  end

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { render 'api/index' }
    format.json do
      render json: {:status => status, :message => msg}
    end
  end
end

What would people recommend to DRY this up? It seems it would be good to somehow construct the JSON status object from the flash hash.

I’m thinking either using a Helper or would there be something more elegant by having the logic to parse the flash hash from a JSON layout?

Answer 1

I found just rendering the flash hash directly for the JSON response works well enough…

def do_stuff
  if params['stuff']

    begin
      Helper.do_stuff params['stuff']
    rescue Exception => ex
      flash[:error] = msg
    else
      flash[:success] = 'Stuff done'
    end

  else
    flash[:error] = 'No stuff provided'
  end

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { redirect_to :action => 'index' }
    format.json do
      render json: flash
    end
  end
end