ruby-grape / ruby-grape/grape

Sending a single element in an array using XML format fails with the request being invalid

Open
#1,662 4 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

bug?
Dominant language
Ruby
Stars
10k
Forks
1.2k
Avg merge
14h 38m
Merged PRs (30d)
92

Description

Hi,

I have an API which accepts requests using XML. It accepts an array of products. However for a case where there is only one product in the array, validation errors occur.
Sample request -
curl -X POST \ http://localhost:3000/v1/products \ -H 'cache-control: no-cache' \ -H 'content-type: application/xml' \ -d '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?> <admin> <product> <id>1</id> <price>100</price> </product> </admin>'

This is because when there is a single element in an array, the product will be parsed to a hash instead of an array of hash objects.
Expected - { admin: { products: [{ id: "1", price: "100" }] } }
Actual - { admin: { products: { id: "1", price: "100" } } }

the parameters are defined as

params do
  requires :admin, type: Hash do
    requires :products, type: Array do
      requires :id, type: String
      requires :price, type: String
    end
  end
end

Currently to overcome this, I run the following before_validation block

before_validation do
  params[:admin][:products] = [params[:admin][:products]] if params[:admin][:products].is_a?(Hash)
end

I was wondering since grape knows the request type (Array or Hash), can it convert the hash to an array before validating (similar to the before_validation block).

Notes:
Using Grape version : 1.0.0
Sample code - https://github.com/ramkumar-kr/grape-xml-error

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the linked grape-xml-error sample code and reproduce the single-product XML request against the shown params definition. Trace how the XML body is represented before validation and compare it with the existing before_validation workaround. Done means a single product is accepted as an array element and the request validates without that workaround.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
ruby
Domain
api
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.