Last Updated: February 25, 2016

JSON API Multilang

I started using jsonapi-resources gem in order to create a JSON API according to JSON schema defined by http://jsonapi.org/

I encountered the issue with multi-lang support.

In my Ruby on Rails project I am using globalize gem for multilang model attribute translations.

I started using globalize-accessors gem as well, as they provide getters and setters for translated fields.

This is the JSON response for

GET /api/v1/pages/8

{
 "data": {
 "id": "8",
 "type": "pages",
 "links": {
 "self": "/api/v1/pages/8"
 },
 "attributes": {
 "slug": "testing-translations",
 "translations": {
 "en": {
 "title": "Testing Translations",
 "body": "<strong>Lorem</strong> ipsum dolor sit amet"
 },
 "de": {
 "title": "Testing Übersetzungen",
 "body": null
 },
 "fr": {
 "title": "Essais Traductions",
 "body": null
 }
 }
 }
 }
}

I defined PageResource as

attributes :slug, :translations

def translations
 translations = {}
 Page.globalize_locales.each do |locale|
 translations[locale] = {} unless translations.has_key? locale

 translations[locale]["title"] = @model.send "title_#{locale}"
 translations[locale]["body"] = @model.send "body_#{locale}"
 end
 translations
 end

This will generate a flatten relationship output.

In order to update translations in same manner, I had to enable translations through the strong parameters

def page_params
 params.require(:data).permit(attributes: [:slug, translations: [:locale, :title, :body]])
 end

As this will call translations=(data) on Page instance, I created this method:

class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
 translates :title, :body
 globalize_accessors

 validates :slug, presence: true

 def translations=(data)
 data.each do |o|
 self.send("title_#{o[:locale]}=", o[:title]) unless o[:title].blank?
 self.send("body_#{o[:locale]}=", o[:body]) unless o[:body].blank?
 end

 end
end

That's it.

According the schema, the PATCH (or POST) request would be:

{
 "data": {
 "type": "pages",
 "attributes": {
 "slug": "test-ing",
 "translations": [
 {
 "locale": "en",
 "title": "Testing Translations",
 "body": "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet"
 },
 {
 "locale": "de",
 "title": "Testing Übersetzungen",
 "body": "Einige Blindtext sollte hier gehen"
 },
 {
 "locale": "fr",
 "title": "Essais Traductions"
 "body": "Certains faux texte devrait aller ici"
 }
 ]
 }
 }
}