JSON API

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API

• Stands for Application Program Interface
• Specifies how you interact with software
• A layer of abstraction for other applications to interact with your Rails application
  • Usually there is documentation on input and output

JSON

• Javascript Object Notation
• Key Value Pairs + Arrays
• Values can be strings, numbers, booleans, and null
• Common way to send data to and from an API

Namespaces

• Organization of controllers within folders allows for better organization
• In routes.rb to specify that it's under a specific folder use the 'namespace' function
• An example on the next slide to resource a users controller that is app/controllers/api/v1/users_controller.b
  • The matching url is 'baseurl.com/api/v1/users'

render

• A controller method that is implicitly called
  • Assumes there is a view with the same name as the action
• To specify JSON we just pass a 'json' option
  • Ex:
    • render json: @users
    • This will render the value stores in @users as a JSON string.

Note

• We will disable CSRF token
  • Stands for Cross Site Request Forgery
  • We need it for a user create
• Server logs are your friends