Building XML API with Grape

Question

I'm building a XML API with the help of the Grape gem. What is the best way to building XML for API actions? Since Grape isn't using standart rails controllers, i can't use views/../xml.builder. What did you suggest? Maybe there are some best practices for building xml api?

Calais

Answer 1

Sinece there are no any answers, i will answer my own question. I ended up with modules where are i declare different kind of xml responses and include this modules into my Grape API. In API actions i just calling response methods from this modules. With this approach my code is clear and separated.

Calais

Hi @Mikhail Nikalyukin I am running in a similar problem. And used same approach where in modules generate xml with builder. However when trying to return using Grape I get an cannot convert String to xml error. I make use of content_type :xml, "text/xml". Any suggestions? Thanks! – Harriet

@Harriet It was a while ago and we used old grape version, it wasn't parsing our xml correctly to, i made a few changes in the grape. Take a look at my commits in the xml_formatter branches github.com/dpsk/grape/branches maybe it will help you. – Calais

I have the same problem now and I'm using rabl to render xml but it's not as flexible as xml.builder by far... could you please explain your solution a little further? – Hynes

@Hynes with which part you have troubles exactly? – Calais

@Hynes take a look gist.github.com/dpsk/d426fbbadefbc74959c4, it's a simple example on how it can be done. – Calais

Answer 2

It seems to be sample. Just provide format to tell grape your default format

format :xml
content_type :xml, "text/xml"

Then add .xml to the end of request url.

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