I want to POST multiple entries at a time to my Rails API backend via JSON. How?

Question

How can you post multiple entries at once time. For example

def create
    @visit = Visit.new(user_params)
    if @visit.save
        respond_with(@visit)
    else

    end
end

private

    def user_params
        params.require(:visit).permit(:room_id, :date)
    end

If this is your controller, and you send the following POST…

Content-Type = application/json

and

{
    "visit": 
        {
            "room_id": "7",
            "date": "2014-05-06"
        }
}

That will create 1 entry. How can you created say 3 entries at once? How do you write the JSON array of 3 visit entries, and how do you permit them properly in the controller?

Answer 1

You could do it by looping through the JSON hash you receive, saving each record as you go:

def create
    for visit in params[:visit] do
        new_visit = Visit.new(user_params)
        new_visit.save
    end
    redirect_to visits_path
end

private

def user_params
   params.require(:visit).permit(:room_id, :date) # => we'll need to fix this
end

The bottom line is that just because you're meant to send data in a specific way, doesn't mean you can't do it other ways. You can loop through passed params, allowing you to call the save method on each [:visit] param you pass