Converting ActiveRecord results to json in transaction script

Question

I've seen a number of posts on this but none of the solutions seem to be working for this application. I have a transaction script, CreateContact, which returns a success object when added to the database:

class CreateContact < TransactionScript
  def run(params)
    contact = Contact.create(params)
    return success(contact: contact)
  end
end

Here's my test code:

require 'spec_helper'

describe CreateContact do

  it_behaves_like('TransactionScripts')
  let(:script) {CreateContact.new}

  it "creates a contact" do
    contact = CreateContact.run({:name=>'contact1', :email=>'[email protected]', :phoneNum=>'1234567'})
    expect(contact.success?).to eq(true)
    expect(contact.name).to eq('contact1')
    expect(contact.email).to eq('[email protected]')
    expect(contact.phoneNum).to eq('1234567')
  end
end

I've tried several ways of parsing to a hash or JSON: splitting apart the params hash in Contact.create, adding ".to_json" and "JSON.parse" to the success object value, calling both on the entire success object, and calling '.to_a.map(&:serializable_hash)'. I've also tried converting the test code properties between the '.property', '[:key]', and '['property']' formats. '['property']' is the only one that seems to return anything, but it only returns "property" (instead of a value).

When running the tests I can actually see that the ActiveRecord object is created successfully, and some of these techniques will parse if I call them in binding.pry, but when I try to implement them in the code the tests still turn up nil values. Can anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

To convert an ActiveRecord object to a JSON-like Hash, you can use the as_json method from the Active Model JSON Serializer:

hash = contact.as_json
#=> {"id"=>1, "name"=>"contact1", ...}

You can then access the contents of the hash with hash["attribute"]. However, you will not be able to call hash[:attribute] or hash.attribute:

hash["name"]   #=> "contact1"
hash[:name]    #=> nil
hash.name      #=> NoMethodError: undefined method `name' for {}:Hash

If you want to add that behavior to the hash you can build an OpenStruct from the hash:

hash2 = OpenStruct.new(contact.as_json)

hash2["name"]  #=> "contact1"
hash2[:name]   #=> "contact1"
hash.name      #=> "contact1"

If you just need the JSON as an actual String, use to_json:

json = contact.to_json
#=> "{\"id\":1,\"name\":\"contact1\",...}"