Dynamic params

[janklimo]

Curious if there is a way to pass in a dynamic param, e.g. an associated record. Params seem to be static-only but please correct me if I misunderstood.

Here's my simplified setup:

# Models
class Gallery < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :setting,
  has_many :images
end

class Image < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :gallery
end

# Serializers
  class GallerySerializer
    include Alba::Resource

    attributes :name

    one :setting, resource: SettingSerializer

    many :images, resource: ImageSerializer #, params: { setting: setting } <~~ this would be handy
  end

  class ImageSerializer
    include Alba::Resource

    attributes :position, :caption, :gallery_id, :url, :alt_text

    attribute :regular_src do |image|
      ImageService
        .new(image, params[:setting]) # <~~ required here
        .regular_src
        .apply_watermark
        .apply_quality
        .apply_format
        .apply_seal
        .to_url
    end

    # ...
  end

In summary, galleries belong to a setting and have many images. Every image needs this setting object to build image URLs etc. I'd like to pass this setting object as a param to avoid N+1 when serializing images.

This is possible now like so:

GallerySerializer.new(Gallery.last, params: { setting: Gallery.last.setting }).serialize

However, I think it would be cleaner if you could add the param in the serializer instead.

[okuramasafumi]

Interesting. It's not possible to do so in current API, but if we have something like dynamic_params we can do:

# many :images, resource: ImageSerializer, params: { setting: setting }
many :images, resource: ImageSerializer, dynamic_params: proc do |gallery|
  {setting: gallery.setting}
end

This might be useful in some cases. I'd like to mention that in your case there's no N+1 problem without params since once a gallery is loaded, image.gallery.setting fetches data from memory, not DB.

[janklimo]

This might be useful in some cases. I'd like to mention that in your case there's no N+1 problem without params since once a gallery is loaded, image.gallery.setting fetches data from memory, not DB.

You're 100% right 👍 forgot I didn't have local caching enabled. Perhaps we can close this for now. Can't think of a very good use case for the new API at this time. Maybe we can revisit if other users have a need for it but I believe it's preferable to keep the API lean unless there is a good reason to expand it.

Thanks for the prompt response!