Missing and inaccurate payload in Rails with ActiveModel and Forms - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a model for Organisation like
class Organisation
include ActiveModel::Model
attr_accessor :orguid,
:title, :firstname, :lastname, :role, :telephone, :extension, :email,
:name, :branch, :address1, :address2, :address3, :city, :state, :country, :zip
end
In my controller I have the following actions:
# frozen_string_literal: true
require 'cgi'
require 'json'
class OrganisationsController < ApplicationController
include Secured
before_action :set_api, only: %i[dashboard create]
before_action :user_info, only: %i[dashboard register]
def dashboard
#registration = #api.registered?
end
def register
#organisation = Organisation.new
end
def create
organisation_params
register_data = params[:organisation].to_h
register_data['oruid'] = org_uid
#api.register(register_data)
end
private
def set_api
#api = CoreApi.new(org_uid)
end
def user_info
#user_info = session[:userinfo].to_h
end
def org_uid
CGI.escape(user_info['uid'])
end
def organisation_params
params.require(:organisation).permit!
end
end
in my register.html.erb I have:
<h1> Register Your Organisation</h1>
<%= form_with model: #organisation, url: org_register_path do |f| %>
<div class="container">
<h2>Your Details</h2>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-2">
<%= f.label :title %>
<%= f.text_field :title, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-5">
<%= f.label :first_name %>
<%= f.text_field :firstname, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-5">
<%= f.label :last_name %>
<%= f.text_field :lastname, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-12">
<%= f.label :role %>
<%= f.text_field :role, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-4">
<%= f.label :telephone %>
<%= f.telephone_field :telephone, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-2">
<%= f.label :extension %>
<%= f.text_field :extension, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<%= f.label :email %>
<%= f.email_field :email, class: 'form-control', readonly:'', value: #user_info['info']['name'] %>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="container">
<h2>Organisation Details</h2>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<%= f.label :name %>
<%= f.text_field :name, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-6">
<%= f.label :branch %>
<%= f.text_field :branch, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-12">
<%= f.label :address_line_1 %>
<%= f.text_field :address1, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-12">
<%= f.label :address_line_2 %>
<%= f.text_field :address2, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-12">
<%= f.label :address_line_3 %>
<%= f.text_field :address3, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-4">
<%= f.label :city %>
<%= f.text_field :city, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-4">
<%= f.label :state %>
<%= f.text_field :state, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
<div class="form-group col-md-4">
<%= f.label :country %>
<%= f.text_field :country, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-2">
<%= f.label :zip %>
<%= f.text_field :zip, class: 'form-control' %>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="container">
<div class="form-row">
<div class="form-group col-md-12">
<%= f.button :Register, class: 'btn btn-primary' %>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<% end %>
and finally the register method in my core_api.rb is this:
def register(data)
body = data.to_json
puts ">> >> >> >> #{body.class} :: #{body}"
options = { headers: { 'Content-Type' => 'application/json' }, body: body }
response = self.class.post('/organisations', options)
#puts ">>>>>>>>>>>> #{response}"
end
and finally my routes.rb file contains:
Rails.application.routes.draw do
get '/' => 'home#show'
get '/auth/auth0/callback' => 'auth0#callback'
get '/auth/failure' => 'auth0#failure'
get '/logout', to: 'logout#logout', as: 'logout'
get '/organisations/dashboard', to: 'organisations#dashboard', as: 'org_dashboard'
get '/organisations/register', to: 'organisations#register', as: 'org_register'
post '/organisations/register', to: 'organisations#create'
root 'home#show'
end
now when I run the server and submit the form in the logs I get:
>> >> >> >> String :: {"title":"","firstname":"","lastname":"","role":"","telephone":"","extension":"","email":"alijy3#yahoo.com","name":"we","branch":"we","address1":"we","address2":"","address3":"","city":"we","state":"","country":"we","zip":"","oruid":"auth0%7C5e5388493d670c11be833bca","contact_id":0}
which to me looks like a proper json. But, since the api response was continually unsuccessful I intercepted the outgoing post with Postman to see what payload is being sent. To my surprise the payload is not flat json, but comes out like this:
I have 2 problems with this:
The api accepts items like address1, address2, city, etc. I believe I should send those rather than the currently showing organisation[address1], organisation[address2], etc.
The second problem is that I add the orguid after the form is submitted and before calling/posting to the api. But, although I can see it in the log messages, I don't see the orguid in the postman payload in any form.
I don't have any database on the server. Everything is fetch/posted/saved through the api. I've been reading about how to work with Activemodel and forms for a while and I haven't managed to get this resolved yet. Any help or explanation would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

No offense but this is a train wreck. You don't need to break every rails convention just because you're not using ActiveRecord in this specific case.
Start off by using ActiveModel::Attributes#attribute instead of Ruby's built in attr_accessor.
class Organisation
include ActiveModel::Model
include ActiveModel::Attributes
[:orguid, :title, :firstname, :lastname, :role, :telephone,
:extension, :email, :name, :branch,
:address1, :address2, :address3, :city, :state, :country, :zip]
.each do |name|
attribute name
end
# #todo write validations!
end
This creates attributes that act like ActiveRecord attributes and you can serialize the model properly with #organization.as_json.
Then lets just start fresh on that controller as there is just too much smell for it to be worth salvaging.
# routes.rb
resources :organisations, only: [:new, :create]
class OganizationsController < ApplicationController
# GET /organizations/new
def new
#organization = Organization.new
end
# POST /organizations
def create
# You never manually parse out incoming params - thats Rack's job.
# also since you have a model - USE IT!
#organization = Organization.new(organization_params) do |o|
o.orguid = org_uid
end
# validate the user input before you send it to an external API
if #organization.valid? && #api.register(#organization)
redirect_to '/somewhere'
else
render :new
end
end
private
# use monads here instead of callbacks!
def user_info
# Rails will serialize/deserialize hashes automatically
# from the session
session[:userinfo]
end
def org_uid
# Have no clue what the heck you're doing with CGI escape.
#org_uid ||= user_info['uid']
end
def api
#api ||= CoreApi.new(org_uid)
end
def organization_params
# You don't have any reason to use 'permit!' and give
# yourself a potential mass assignment vunerablity
params.require(:organization)
.permit(
:title, :firstname, :lastname, :role, :telephone,
:extension, :email, :name, :branch,
:address1, :address2, :address3, :city,
:state, :country, :zip
)
end
end
Rename the view /organizations/new.html.rb. At this point you should be able to stub out the API and do an integration test with valid and invalid input.
That whole session[:userinfo] thing still smells really bad - if you are taking the response from OAuth and shoving it into the session your setting yourself up for a really bad time as that can cause cookie overflows. Also in general in Rails if you're ever manually casting/serializing then its a really good sign that your doing something very wrong.
Have no clue really whats going on in your CoreApi class but if you are using HTTParty you should not do ANY manual JSON encoding.
# #fixme name is way to generic.
class CoreApi
include HTTParty
format :json # sets content type and encodes the content
# ...
def register(organization)
response = self.class.post('/organisations', #organization.as_json)
if response.success?
true
else
#organization.errors.add(:base, 'Could not be registered')
false
end
end
end