Rails Custom RSS

Question

I'm building an XML feed for my application and am wondering what the best way to implement it would be.

I have an Item class, with a field "related_item," which right now contains ids to related items in an array)

For instance, I could have the following item:

id: 3  
name: an item  
related_items: [67, 94, ...]

and would like to get the following xml when I access mysite.com/items/3.xml:

<item>
  <id>3</id> <name>An item</name>
  <related-items> 
    <related-item> <id>67</id> <name>A related items</name> </related-item>
    <related-item> <id>94</id> <name>Another related items</name> </related-item>
    <related-item> ... </related-item> 
  </related-items> 
</item>

What's a good way to accomplish that (this is just an example, I will actually have many more fields and would like to avoid rewriting as much as I can)? Thanks

apneadiving · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-03 21:40:53Z

1

See great Railscast here.

answered Aug 3, 2011 at 21:40

apneadiving

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3 Comments

apneadiving Over a year ago

you even have an example on the first page, without watching anything

alex Over a year ago

Something I don't understand: let's say I want to have an xml for a user, with its associated items. How can I reuse the code I wrote in items/show.xml.builder in users/show.xml.builder?

alex Over a year ago

Or, if I want a feed with search results, and want to use several Items in the feed, how do I avoid duplicating my code?

alex · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-04 05:33:43Z

1

In order to avoid duplicating code, I preferred using serialization as opposed to creating a builder view. I used a little trick in order to avoid "stack too deep" problems. Here is how it look:

class Item

def to_xml(options={})
      if options[:short]
        options.merge!(:only => [:id, :name])
      else
        options.merge!(:only => [:id, :name], :include => {:related_items => {:short => true}})
      end
      super(options)
end

That way I can reuse my to_xml in other places. For instance, in my user controller I can do:

format.xml {render :xml => @user.to_xml(:include => :user_items)}

It's the best way to do it I could find.

answered Aug 4, 2011 at 5:33

alex

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2 Comments

apneadiving Over a year ago

I didn't realize that's what you expected. Good catch, +1

alex Over a year ago

thanks!... It was hard to formulate the question precisely. Sorry for the confusion.

schiza · Accepted Answer · 2011-08-03 22:33:14Z

0

not neccesary RSS feed is needed, but simple XML builder.. some links:

http://danengle.us/2009/05/generating-custom-xml-for-your-rails-app/

http://prograstinator.blogspot.com/2010/02/how-to-use-xml-builder-templates-in.html

answered Aug 3, 2011 at 22:33

schiza

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