Question

In Rails 3, is there a way to produce an ActiveRecord object from xml in a controller without writing code yourself to explicitly parse it? Say for example, could a controller receive xml like

<user>
 <first_name>Bob</first_name>
 <last_name>Smith</last_name>
</user>

and have it produce a proper User object similar to User.new(params[:user])? This is for an api.

Answer 1

Yes, you can do it like this:

@user = User.new
@user.from_xml(xml_data)

Update

On overriding you can do something like this:

#user.rb
def from_xml(xml_data)
  book = Book.new
  book.from_xml(extract_xml_from(xml_data))
  self.books << book
  super(xml_data)
  save
  book.save
end

Please note that the most important line in the overriding is the super(xml_data) which will take care on calling the original from_xml(xml_data) of the ActiveRecord model.
So you can customize the rest as needed, but this line is neede if you want to get the original functionality as well.
Let me know if something is not clear.