How to Make Ember.js Behave with Grails Controller Names?

Question

Grails is pretty powerful, and lets you turn your Domain objects into JSON with a single statement (object as JSON). Unfortunately, this is not sufficient to interact with Ember.js for a few reasons.

How can I make Grails play nicely with Ember.js?

Answer 1

Good question, self!

Ember.js, and its auto-AJAX-in-browser-data-store ninjitsu expect the URL to look a certain way, and the JSON to look a certain way. Due to the way that each tool works, it's easier to make conforming changes to both sides of the equation!

What Grails Provides

For a Domain class MyCoolDomainClass with a controller MyCoolDomainClassController, Grails wants to provide the URL /app/myCoolDomainClass. If you set up the controller to contain something along the lines of:

def index() { render MyCoolDomainClass.list() as JSON }

You'll get a response that looks like:

[{ id: 1, name: "Bob"}, {id: 2, name: "Sally"}]

What Ember Wants

In Ember.js, you might create a Model with the same properties. By leveraging ember-data, you can easily hook up the Data Store in the browser with your backend. Unfortunately, what Ember.js wants is different. It expects the the url /my_cool_domain_class to provide the data:

{ mycooldomainclass: [ { id: 1, name: "Bob"}, {id: 2, name "Sally"}] }

Reconciling

UPDATE: I've created a ember-data-grails repo on Github which takes care of all of these modifications for you, and demonstrates how to make a controller that plays along nicely!