a collection of little tools I have used when creating APIs. these are generally too small to have their own library, so have been collected here.
A module for inclusion in a Rails application controller inheriting from ActionController::Base (Rocketpants should also work, but no guarantees).
You know that pattern in rails, render(some_stuff) and return?
Don't use it. It's wrong. and is used to short-circuit, but you don't actually want your return to be conditional on the render. Since it is conditional on the return value of render, if the return value of render is false-ish (false or nil), you may end end up failing to return. The actual return value of render is undocumented. If you follow all the control paths that can affect the return value, last time I looked there were 37 different paths. None of them returns false, but if any control path changes to return false then render and return will break.
What you really mean is render(some_stuff); return, but semicolons are (rightly) frowned upon
in ruby. Really you should just put the return on the next line.
Or, use #halt, kindly provided by ApiHammer.
ApiHammer#halt is based on the Sinatra pattern of throw(:halt, response). It uses exceptions because Rails has baked-in exception rescuing (but not, at least as far as I have found, throw catching), but that is hidden away.
Pass it an parameters which are required, and if they are missing or incorrect it will halt with 422 (not 400 - 400 is wrong).
Various other things. This readme is incomplete and will be updated soon.