body-types.md

Flexirest: Body types

By default Flexirest formats the request bodies as normal CGI parameters in K=V&K2=V2 format. However, if you want to use JSON for your PUT/POST requests, you can use choose to configure Flexirest to do so (the other option, the default, is :form_encoded):

class Person < Flexirest::Base
  request_body_type :json
  # ...
end

or

Flexirest::Base.request_body_type = :json

This will also set the header Content-Type to application/x-www-form-urlencoded by default or application/json; charset=utf-8 when :json. You can override this using the callback before_request.

You can also use :form_multipart if your API requires file uploads. Any parameters set to File like object (supporting #path and #read) will be automatically uploaded with the parameters, in a normal form submission style:

class Person < Flexirest::Base
  request_body_type :form_multipart
  put :update, "/people/:id"
end

Person.update(id: 1, avatar: File.open("avatar.png"))

If you have an API that is inconsistent in its body type requirements, you can also specify it on the individual method mapping:

class Person < Flexirest::Base
  request_body_type :form_encoded # This is the default, but just for demo purposes

  get :all, '/people', request_body_type: :json
end

If your API expects some weird formatting on the requests, but you still want to use Flexirest for caching, response parsing, other models, etc you can pass :plain as the request body type either at the class level or method mapping level, and this will be passed through to the API. By default plain requests are sent with the Content-Type: text/plain header, but you can override this with :content_type when calling the mapped method.

class Person < Flexirest::Base
  put :save, '/person/:id/logs', request_body_type: :plain
end

Person.save(id: 1, body: '["Something here"]', 
            content_type: "application/json")

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