Standard-ify API responses

[manojmj92]

Right now we are using the simple render json: object way to render API responses.

While this is all right for a small product and a small team, I think we are now at a stage where we should be worrying about maintainability, given that more and more contributors are showing interest to contribute to our project.

Keeping this in mind, I would like us to adopt to some standard while rendering API responses.

I am not a fan of json_api spec, and I would like to stick to simple json responses, but would like us to use something like Grape to maintain the structure of API responses.

Open to suggestions, if majority agrees we can start moving towards rendering the responses with grape.

@subintp @pranavrajs @sojan-official @nithindavid

[pranavrajs]

@manojmj92 I agree there is a need to standardize the APIs. I'd like to stick with jbuilder now. We can probably remove all render: json code for now. I'd like to work on things that people want us to build. Let us prioritize on fixing issues we have currently and the features users requested for. Once we are stable, let us come back to this and take this up.

[joedarc]

Even making use of something like Active Model Serializers might help with this for now, looks like you could integrate Grape later.

I know this issue wasn't pertaining directly to performance, but I know in the past when I swapped from using Jbuilder to serializers the performance increase was definitely noticeable.

Also I just prefer the model-layer handling the serialization over the view. Would be a pretty simple process to start using serializers for most things over Jbuilder.

Just my two cents, GitHub explore sent me here and this caught my eye. 👋

[sojan-official]

@joedarc Thanks for the input :D
We started with jbuilder, cause of the ease at which we can construct complex json objects with it. It's been particularly helpful when you are at the ship it fast mode.

But Active model serializers are definitely in our consideration and is what we use in some of the other projects. So once things are stable we will definitely revisit this.

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http://www.carlosramireziii.com/which-json-serializer-to-use-for-a-new-rails-api.html

https://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/comments/2lcldk/activemodelserializers_vs_jbuilder/

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/26097563/jbuilder-vs-rails-api-active-model-serializers-for-json-handling-in-rails-4