owenthereal / msgpack_rails

MessagePack for Rails / msgpack.org[Rails]

MessagePack for Rails

The Rails way to serialize/deserialize objects with Message Pack. It implements the ActiveSupport encoder & decoder and the ActiveModel serializer for Message Pack.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'msgpack_rails'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install msgpack_rails

Usage

msgpack_rails converts data type using as_json before feeding it into msgpack. Here are a few examples:

$ ActiveSupport::MessagePack.encode(:a => :b)
=> "\x81\xA1a\xA1b"

$ ActiveSupport::MessagePack.encode(Time.now)
=> "\xB92013-09-11T10:40:39-07:00"

$ Time.now.as_msgpack
=> "2013-09-11T10:48:13-07:00"

$ Time.now.to_msgpack
=> "\xB92013-09-11T10:40:39-07:00"

$ ActiveSupport::MessagePack.decode Time.now.to_msgpack
=> "2013-09-11T11:23:07-07:00"

# After setting ActiveSupport.parse_msgpack_times to true
$ ActiveSupport::MessagePack.decode Time.now.to_msgpack
=> Wed, 11 Sep 2013 11:25:18 -0700

You can also use it as part of ActiveModel, similar to to_json:

class Contact
  include ActiveModel::Serializers::MessagePack

  ...
end

@contact = Contact.new
@contact.name = 'Owen Ou'
@contact.age = 28
@contact.created_at = Time.utc(2006, 8, 1)
@contact.awesome = true
@contact.preferences = { 'shows' => 'anime' }

@contact.to_msgpack                # => msgpack output
@contact.to_msgpack(:root => true) # => include root in msgpack output

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

msgpack_rails's Issues

Incompatible with Rails 4.x

I just updated to the 0.4.0 release of msgpack_rails and it looks like the addition of an ActionController renderer in #1 results in an API compatibility issue in the Rails 4.x series:

/opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/msgpack_rails-0.4.0/lib/msgpack_rails.rb:41:in `block in <class:Rails>': undefined method `add_renderer' for ActionController:Module (NoMethodError)
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/initializable.rb:30:in `instance_exec'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/initializable.rb:30:in `run'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/gems/2.1.0/gems/railties-4.1.0/lib/rails/initializable.rb:55:in `block in run_initializers'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/2.1.0/tsort.rb:226:in `block in tsort_each'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/2.1.0/tsort.rb:348:in `block (2 levels) in each_strongly_connected_component'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/2.1.0/tsort.rb:427:in `each_strongly_connected_component_from'
        from /opt/boxen/rbenv/versions/2.1.1/lib/ruby/2.1.0/tsort.rb:347:in `block in each_strongly_connected_component'

In Rails 4, ActionController.add_renderer was relocated to ActionController::Renderers.add. I hacked it a bit by replacing lines 41-44 of msgpack_rails.rb with:

        renderer = Proc.new do |data, options|
          self.content_type = Mime::MSGPACK
          self.response_body = data.as_msgpack(options)
        end

        if ::Rails::VERSION::MAJOR >= 4 && ::Rails::VERSION::MINOR >= 1
          ::ActionController::Renderers.add(:msgpack, &renderer)
        else
          ::ActionController.add_renderer(:msgpack, &renderer)
        end

I would set up appraisal and test against Rails 3.2.x, 4.0.x, and 4.1.x but the development dependencies in the gemspec are a bit too restrictive at the moment. So, solutions? Should I open a pull request with support for only Rails 4.1.x or should backwards compatibility be preserved?

Thanks!