PoC migration to fast_jsonapi

[luisramos0]

What we should change and why (this is tech debt)

AMS is not mantained anylonger we need to move to something else. Discussion here: https://community.openfoodnetwork.org/t/alternatives-to-ams/1717/

We need to try fast_jsonapi and see how it would look like. From what I read it will consist of minor adaptions in the serializers and some work to adapt the frontend code to the new jsonapi compatible payloads :tada:

Ideally, this issue includes more info, or even a second POC, using other alternatives jbuilder or blueprinter or other.

Context

Last raised in https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork/pull/5638

Impact and timeline

AMS works with rails 6, but if we know we will need to change why not adapt now.

[jeduardo824]

Hey, I can try to move some serializers (I don't know how many) to fast_jsonapi as a POC and check if will be simple to move from AMS, what do you guys think?

[luisramos0]

yes please, that would be amazing!

[jeduardo824]

Ops, I think we will need to wait a little bit more before doing that because fast_jsonapi (now renamed to jsonapi_serializer) needs Rails 4.2, and we are at 4.1.

[luisramos0]

Hello @jeduardo824 I guess you mean https://github.com/jsonapi-serializer/jsonapi-serializer/
I think you are right, even fast_jsonapi started with rails 5 and then moved to support rails 4.2 :face_with_head_bandage: This is blocked by rails 4.2 upgrade. For what is worth, I have now created the rails 4.2 upgrade issue :-) https://github.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork/issues/5761

[luisramos0]

Anyway, thanks a lot, it's really good we have a specific plan in this area :+1:

[jeduardo824]

Awesome! I will be happy to help with the 4.1 and 4.2 migration if you guys need anything else (I saw that almost all tickets are assigned, so I don't know if there is anything else to do with the 4.1 migration) and after that, I can move forward with the POC of jsonapi-serializer

[luisramos0]

:ok_hand:

If you look at the latest/best 4.1 build on PR #5611 https://semaphoreci.com/openfoodfoundation/openfoodnetwork-2/branches/pull-request-5611/builds/4 You can see other issues to be solved. Including instances of #5606 with errors like: ActionController::InvalidCrossOriginRequest

[Matt-Yorkley]

Note: Netflix are not the primary maintainers any more, the project has been forked https://github.com/jsonapi-serializer/jsonapi-serializer

[luisramos0]

This is not blocked any more. It is worring that v3 will be a "rewrite"... https://github.com/jsonapi-serializer/jsonapi-serializer/pull/141

[Matt-Yorkley]

I had a quick look at what implementing this would actually involve, and I think it might be a lot more work than we imagined. The output is very closely tied to the JSON:API standard, and I think it would necessitate rewriting a lot of our existing Angular code, specifically in that the attributes of the objects are additionally nested under an attributes: key: https://github.com/jsonapi-serializer/jsonapi-serializer#serialized-output

The 20-30x improvement in performance is pretty crazy though...

[kirstenalarsen]

There's no way to do it one-by-one @Matt-Yorkley @luisramos0 ? Like rewrite the angular code in relation to each endpoint as we release them? or it would all have to be done to change to the new thing before we can do anything?

[Matt-Yorkley]

The issue is: exactly how much rewriting would be needed? We won't know that without doing a bit of a spike.