Lightning talk from Railsconf 2013. https://github.com/ajsharp/bldr

1. Bldr
A minimalist JSON templating DSL
github.com/ajsharp/bldr

2. github.com/ajsharp/bldr
github.com/ajsharp/bldr

3. github.com/ajsharp/bldr
What?
• Produce JSON from ruby objects
• 4 core API methods
• Treat json API responses as a view layer concern
• Support for rack/sinatra and rails 3.2
• In production use at Zaarly for ~2 years
Bldr in a nutshell

4. github.com/ajsharp/bldr
Why?
• Rails is a great framework for building API services
• But #as_json is not for serving prod-ready json
• APIs are not intuitive for other json templating engines
• See: rabl, json_builder, et al

5. object :post => @post do
attributes :title, :body
end
{
"post":{
"title":"my title",
"body": "..."
}
}
bldr JSON
github.com/ajsharp/bldr
Example: objects

6. bldr JSON
collection :posts => @posts do |post|
attributes :title, :body
attribute(:created_at) {
post.created_at.iso8601
}
end
{"posts": [
{
"title": "Railsconf 2013 wrap-up",
"body": "...",
"created_at": "2013-05-01T14:18:16-07:00"
},
{
"title": "OMG Railsconf is coming up!",
"body": "...",
"created_at": "2013-04-20T08:01:12-07:00"
}
]}
github.com/ajsharp/bldr
Example: collections

7. bldr JSON
collection :posts => @posts do |post|
attributes :title, :body
attribute(:created_at) { post.created_at.iso8601 }
collection :comments => post.comments do |comment|
attributes(:author_name)
attribute(:body) {
HTML::Whitelister.clean(comment.body)
}
end
end
{"posts": [{
"title": "Railsconf 2013 wrap-up",
"body": "...",
"created_at": "2013-05-01T14:18:16-07:00",
"comments":[
{
"author_name": "Bob Bobberson",
"body": "ohai!"
}
]
}]
}
github.com/ajsharp/bldr
Example: nested collections

8. Rails Sinatra
github.com/ajsharp/bldr
class PostsController < ApplicationController
# GET /posts
def index
@posts = Post.all.limit(10)
render :index
end
end
# app/views/posts/index.json.bldr
collection :posts => @posts do |post|
# ...
end
class Api::Posts < Sinatra::Application
register Sinatra::Bldr
get '/posts' do
@posts = Post.all.limit(10)
bldr :'posts/index'
end
end
# views/posts/index.json.bldr
collection :posts => @posts do |post|
# ...
end
Example: Rails / Sinatra

9. twitter @ajsharp
web alexjsharp.com
github.com/ajsharp/bldr