Rails beginner - How to make this API accept JSON?

Question

I am new to rails and am trying to connect my rails api for an article (consists of two fields - title and description) to an iOS application. I am trying to send JSON data in a POST request and then save that data in a database. I am wondering how to make my articles_controller accept and save json data.

Here is my code so far:

class ArticlesController < ApplicationController
before_action :set_article, only: [:edit, :update, :show, :destroy]

def index
  @all_articles = Article.all
end

def new
  @article = Article.new
end

def edit

end

def create
  @article = Article.new(article_params)
  if @article.save
    flash[:notice] = "Article was sucessfully created"
    redirect_to article_path(@article)
  else
    render 'new'
  end
end

def show

end

def update

  if @article.update(article_params)
    flash[:notice] = "Article was successfully updated."
    redirect_to article_path(@article)
  else
    render 'edit'
  end
end

def destroy

  @article.destroy
  flash[:notice] = "Article was successfully deleted."
  redirect_to(articles_path)
end

private
  def set_article
    @article = Article.find(params[:id])
  end
  def article_params
    params.require(:article).permit(:title, :description)
  end
 end

The above code is able to submit a form on the webpage and save it to my database. I would like to alter it to accept json data from an iOS application and save to the database.

Thank you very much for any help

Answer 1

Make a route for POST method:

In config/routes.rb

match 'accept_post' => 'articles#accept_post', :via => :post

In Articles Controller

def accept_post
  // get parameters as usual (like params[:title] etc.)
  // do the saving to db
end

Important Note : Make the url publicly accessible. But do your own authentication, so others cannot POST to it.

You can use your existing action in controller (like create ) if you want, just wanna give you an idea about it.

You may need to parse the JSON in controller :

require 'json'

JSON.parse(<json object>)

JSON.parse(response.body)