Jsoning

Turning object into json can sometimes be frustrating. With Jsoning, you could turn your everyday ruby object into JSON, very easily. It should work with any Ruby object there is. Kiss good bye to complexity

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'Jsoning'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install jsoning

Assumptions

We have classes already defined as follow:

module My; end
class My::User
  attr_accessor :name, :age, :gender
  attr_accessor :taken_degree
  attr_accessor :books

  def initialize
    self.books = []
  end
end
class My::Book
  attr_accessor :name
  def initialize(name)
    self.name = name
  end
end
class My::UserDegree
  attr_accessor :faculty
  attr_accessor :degree_name

  def to_s
    "#{degree_name} at #{faculty}"
  end
end

Usage

Say, we want to serialize User. First, we have to define the serializer for My::User:

Jsoning.for(My::User) do
  key :name
  key :years_old, from: :age
  key :gender, default: "male"
  key :books
  key :degree_detail, from: :taken_degree
end

But, as user have books and taken_degree which could be an instance of My::Book and My::UserDegree, on which Jsoning has no clue about how to serialize... you should define serializer for them as well:

Jsoning.for(My::Book) do
  key :name
end

Jsoning.for(My::UserDegree) do
  key :faculty
  key :degree, from: :degree_name
end

So, where you put those codes? Anywhere you want it just make sure it is loaded/required. You can put it inside a file for each serializer, or a single file for all serializer. Anyway you want it.

After those serializers are defined, we can have a test. Assume we let user to have value as follow:

user = My::User.new
user.name = "Adam Baihaqi"
user.age = 21
user.books << My::Book.new("Quiet: The Power of Introvert")
user.books << My::Book.new("Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince")
user

To serialize user, we only need to call:

Jsoning(user)

Which will return:

{"name":"Adam Baihaqi","years_old":21,"gender":"male","books":[{"name":"Quiet: The Power of Introvert"},{"name":"Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"}],"degree_detail":null}

We can also pretty-print the value, which usually is bit slower though, by calling:

Jsoning(user, pretty: true)

Which will return:

{
  "name": "Adam Baihaqi",
  "years_old": 21,
  "gender": "male",
  "books": [
    {
      "name": "Quiet: The Power of Introvert"
    },
    {
      "name": "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
    }
  ],
  "degree_detail": null
}

Now, let us fill in the degree detail:

degree = My::UserDegree.new
degree.faculty = "School of IT"
degree.degree_name = "B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Science"
user.taken_degree = degree

Jsoning the user with pretty set to true, will return:

{
  "name": "Adam Baihaqi",
  "years_old": 21,
  "gender": "male",
  "books": [
    {
      "name": "Quiet: The Power of Introvert"
    },
    {
      "name": "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"
    }
  ],
  "degree_detail": {
    "faculty": "School of IT",
    "degree": "B.Sc. (Hons) Computer Science"
  }
}

Wish it to be helpful for you! Enjoy!

License

The gem is proudly available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.