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Notes

Setting up the JSON api

If we want to persist our changes, the first thing we'll need to do is have the index page display what's in the database rather than using our hard coded array.

Let's make sure that our index action is set up to return JSON. We need to add the appropriate routes back into Rails, but we don't want to trample on Backbone for non-json requests. Unfortunately, there's no good way to tell Rails to only use a route for JSON requests (we can come close with constraints, but they ignore the Accept header). One option would be to prefix all of our API routes with /api, but for now let's rely on the fact that we only need index, update, and create, none of which conflict with Backbone.

  • In the routes file add a call to resources

    resources :notes, only: [:index, :create, :update, :destroy]
    
  • In order to keep Rails and Backbone from conflicting we also want to route any request to our notes#index action

    get '*any' => 'notes#index'
    
  • Next we want to build out our Notes Rails controller to connect with our Backbone application

    class NotesController < ApplicationController
      helper_method :notes, :note
      respond_to :json, only: [:index, :create, :update, :destroy]
      respond_to :html, only: [:index]
    
      def index
        respond_with notes
      end
    
      def create
        note = Note.create(note_params)
        respond_with note
      end
    
      def update
        note.update_attributes(note_params)
        respond_with note
      end
    
      def destroy
        respond_with note.destroy
      end
    
      private
    
      def note_params
        params.permit(:title, :content)
      end
    
      def notes
        @_notes ||= Note.all
      end
    
      def note
        @_note ||= notes.find(params[:id])
      end
    end
    
  • Commit!