Using Fractal Transformer with ember-data - json

Question

I am using PHP league's Fractal as the transformer for my API. However, I think I must be doing something wrong as the item transformer wraps everything in an array like it would a collection which is against the JSON API standard I believe.
So for a user with ID of one I get something like this:
{
"users":[
{
"id":1,
"firstName":"Jacob",
"surname":"Windsor",
}
]
}
When surely it should be this?
{
"users":
{
"id":1,
"firstName":"Jacob",
"surname":"Windsor",
}
}
I am using ember.js and this is causing problems with naming conventions.
I am using Laravel and in my userController I have something like this:
public function show($id)
{
$user = User::find($id);
return $this->respondItem($user);
}
Then in the apiController that everything extends from:
public function respond($response, $status = 200){
return Response::make($response, $status);
}
public function respondTransform($resource){
$fractal = new Fractal\Manager();
$fractal->setSerializer(new JsonApiSerializer());
return $this->respond($fractal->createData($resource)->toJson());
}
public function respondItem($data, $transformer = null, $namespace = null){
! isset($transformer) ? $transformer = $this->transformer : $transformer = $transformer;
! isset($namespace) ? $namespace = $this->namespace : $namespace = $namespace;
$resource = new Item($data, $transformer, $namespace);
return $this->respondTransform($resource);
}
I must be doing something wrong. The fractal docs have no examples specifically for items only collections so I am unsure what I have done.

Answer 1

So it seems that Fractal doesn't quite obey ember-data's conventions which is an annoying problem but very easily overcome using custom serialziers.
I have a psr-4 autoloaded file named CustomJsonSerializer which I have included in my ApiController class. If you follow the article on php league's site (posted above) its fairly easy to do. I have these two methods.
public function collection($resourceKey, array $data)
{
return array($resourceKey ?: 'data' => $data);
}
/**
* Serialize an item resource
*
* #param string $resourceKey
* #param array $data
*
* #return array
*/
public function item($resourceKey, array $data)
{
return [$resourceKey => $data];
}
You can see that the collection is responding as it normally would, i.e I haven't changed it. But the item method just responds without the extra array. Simple! You have to include all the other methods as well and I haven't got round to sorting out pagination but it should be fairly simple.
I hope this helps anyone wanting to use ember-data with Fractal. I highly recommend it, fractal has made my life so much easier. You could build transformers yourself but it makes it so much easier and more easily modified in the future.
Edit:
Please make sure you keep the $resourceKey in both the methods. You need to be using it and setting it when calling the transformer. |Ember-data requires a resource key.

Answer 2

Assuming your userController extends ApiController, you could simply do:
public function show($id)
{
$user = User::findOrFail($id);
return $this->setStatusCode(200)->withItem($user, new UserTransformer);
}
You do need to implement the UserTransformer class. If you need help with that, let me know in the comments.

Answer 3

I actually found that a much simpler adjustment of JsonApiSerializer did what I needed for Ember:
(I just took out the count($data) check)
<?php
namespace Acme\Serializer;
use RuntimeException;
use League\Fractal\Serializer\JsonApiSerializer;
class EmberSerializer extends JsonApiSerializer
{
/**
* Serialize the top level data.
*
* #param string $resourceKey
* #param array $data
*
* #return array
*/
public function serializeData($resourceKey, array $data)
{
if (! $resourceKey) {
throw new RuntimeException('The $resourceKey parameter must be provided when using '.__CLASS__);
}
return array($resourceKey => $data);
}
}