Jbuilder gives you a simple DSL for declaring JSON structures that beats manipulating giant hash structures. This is particularly helpful when the generation process is fraught with conditionals and loops. Here's a simple example:
# app/views/messages/show.json.jbuilder
json.content format_content(@message.content)
json.(@message, :created_at, :updated_at)
json.author do
json.name @message.creator.name.familiar
json.email_address @message.creator.email_address_with_name
json.url url_for(@message.creator, format: :json)
end
if current_user.admin?
json.visitors calculate_visitors(@message)
end
json.comments @message.comments, :content, :created_at
json.attachments @message.attachments do |attachment|
json.filename attachment.filename
json.url url_for(attachment)
endThis will build the following structure:
{
"content": "<p>This is <i>serious</i> monkey business</p>",
"created_at": "2011-10-29T20:45:28-05:00",
"updated_at": "2011-10-29T20:45:28-05:00",
"author": {
"name": "David H.",
"email_address": "'David Heinemeier Hansson' <[email protected]>",
"url": "http://example.com/users/1-david.json"
},
"visitors": 15,
"comments": [
{ "content": "Hello everyone!", "created_at": "2011-10-29T20:45:28-05:00" },
{ "content": "To you my good sir!", "created_at": "2011-10-29T20:47:28-05:00" }
],
"attachments": [
{ "filename": "forecast.xls", "url": "http://example.com/downloads/forecast.xls" },
{ "filename": "presentation.pdf", "url": "http://example.com/downloads/presentation.pdf" }
]
}To define attribute and structure names dynamically, use the set! method:
json.set! :author do
json.set! :name, 'David'
end
# => {"author": { "name": "David" }}To merge existing hash or array to current context:
hash = { author: { name: "David" } }
json.post do
json.title "Merge HOWTO"
json.merge! hash
end
# => "post": { "title": "Merge HOWTO", "author": { "name": "David" } }Top level arrays can be handled directly. Useful for index and other collection actions.
# @comments = @post.comments
json.array! @comments do |comment|
next if comment.marked_as_spam_by?(current_user)
json.body comment.body
json.author do
json.first_name comment.author.first_name
json.last_name comment.author.last_name
end
end
# => [ { "body": "great post...", "author": { "first_name": "Joe", "last_name": "Bloe" }} ]You can also extract attributes from array directly.
# @people = People.all
json.array! @people, :id, :name
# => [ { "id": 1, "name": "David" }, { "id": 2, "name": "Jamie" } ]To make a plain array without keys, construct and pass in a standard Ruby array.
my_array = %w(David Jamie)
json.people my_array
# => "people": [ "David", "Jamie" ]You don't always have or need a collection when building an array.
json.people do
json.child! do
json.id 1
json.name 'David'
end
json.child! do
json.id 2
json.name 'Jamie'
end
end
# => { "people": [ { "id": 1, "name": "David" }, { "id": 2, "name": "Jamie" } ] }Jbuilder objects can be directly nested inside each other. Useful for composing objects.
class Person
# ... Class Definition ... #
def to_builder
Jbuilder.new do |person|
person.(self, :name, :age)
end
end
end
class Company
# ... Class Definition ... #
def to_builder
Jbuilder.new do |company|
company.name name
company.president president.to_builder
end
end
end
company = Company.new('Doodle Corp', Person.new('John Stobs', 58))
company.to_builder.target!
# => {"name":"Doodle Corp","president":{"name":"John Stobs","age":58}}You can either use Jbuilder stand-alone or directly as an ActionView template language. When required in Rails, you can create views à la show.json.jbuilder (the json is already yielded):
# Any helpers available to views are available to the builder
json.content format_content(@message.content)
json.(@message, :created_at, :updated_at)
json.author do
json.name @message.creator.name.familiar
json.email_address @message.creator.email_address_with_name
json.url url_for(@message.creator, format: :json)
end
if current_user.admin?
json.visitors calculate_visitors(@message)
endYou can use partials as well. The following will render the file
views/comments/_comments.json.jbuilder, and set a local variable
comments with all this message's comments, which you can use inside
the partial.
json.partial! 'comments/comments', comments: @message.commentsIt's also possible to render collections of partials:
json.array! @posts, partial: 'posts/post', as: :post
# or
json.partial! 'posts/post', collection: @posts, as: :post
# or
json.partial! partial: 'posts/post', collection: @posts, as: :post
# or
json.comments @post.comments, partial: 'comments/comment', as: :commentThe as: :some_symbol is used with partials. It will take care of mapping the passed in object to a variable for the
partial. If the value is a collection either implicitly or explicitly by using the collection: option, then each
value of the collection is passed to the partial as the variable some_symbol. If the value is a singular object,
then the object is passed to the partial as the variable some_symbol.
Be sure not to confuse the as: option to mean nesting of the partial. For example:
# Use the default `views/comments/_comment.json.jbuilder`, putting @comment as the comment local variable.
# Note, `comment` attributes are "inlined".
json.partial! @comment, as: :commentis quite different from:
# comment attributes are nested under a "comment" property
json.comment do
json.partial! "/comments/comment.json.jbuilder", comment: @comment
endYou can pass any objects into partial templates with or without :locals option.
json.partial! 'sub_template', locals: { user: user }
# or
json.partial! 'sub_template', user: userYou can explicitly make Jbuilder object return null if you want:
json.extract! @post, :id, :title, :content, :published_at
json.author do
if @post.anonymous?
json.null! # or json.nil!
else
json.first_name @post.author_first_name
json.last_name @post.author_last_name
end
endTo prevent Jbuilder from including null values in the output, you can use the ignore_nil! method:
json.ignore_nil!
json.foo nil
json.bar "bar"
# => { "bar": "bar" }Fragment caching is supported, it uses Rails.cache and works like caching in
HTML templates:
json.cache! ['v1', @person], expires_in: 10.minutes do
json.extract! @person, :name, :age
endYou can also conditionally cache a block by using cache_if! like this:
json.cache_if! !admin?, ['v1', @person], expires_in: 10.minutes do
json.extract! @person, :name, :age
endAside from that, the :cached options on collection rendering is available on Rails >= 6.0. This will cache the
rendered results effectively using the multi fetch feature.
json.array! @posts, partial: "posts/post", as: :post, cached: true
# or:
json.comments @post.comments, partial: "comments/comment", as: :comment, cached: trueIf your collection cache depends on multiple sources (try to avoid this to keep things simple), you can name all these dependencies as part of a block that returns an array:
json.array! @posts, partial: "posts/post", as: :post, cached: -> post { [post, current_user] }This will include both records as part of the cache key and updating either of them will expire the cache.
Keys can be auto formatted using key_format!, this can be used to convert
keynames from the standard ruby_format to camelCase:
json.key_format! camelize: :lower
json.first_name 'David'
# => { "firstName": "David" }You can set this globally with the class method key_format (from inside your
environment.rb for example):
Jbuilder.key_format camelize: :lowerBy default, key format is not applied to keys of hashes that are
passed to methods like set!, array! or merge!. You can opt into
deeply transforming these as well:
json.key_format! camelize: :lower
json.deep_format_keys!
json.settings([{some_value: "abc"}])
# => { "settings": [{ "someValue": "abc" }]}You can set this globally with the class method deep_format_keys (from inside your
environment.rb for example):
Jbuilder.deep_format_keys trueTo test the response body of your controller spec, enable render_views in your RSpec context. This configuration renders the views in a controller test.
Jbuilder is the work of many contributors. You're encouraged to submit pull requests, propose features and discuss issues.
See CONTRIBUTING.
Jbuilder is released under the MIT License.