Filtering API results

Phoenix Forum Questions / Help
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1

Hi all,

I am learning how to create a basic API with Phoenix (I know, I do not need Phoenix, but I wanted to see how it is actually done). Everything works well but I have not been able to wrap my head around the process to filter results. For instance, my API JSON return is like this:

{
  "data": {
    "active": true,
    "carmaker": "Simca",
    "id": 1,
    "owner": "James Bon",
    "plate": 345671
  }
}

It all goes well if I simply do:

GET /api/customers/ or GET /api/customers/1. But I want to be able to do GET /api/customers?carmaker=carmaker_name

What I have so far is:

router.ex:

defmodule NukakApiWeb.Router do

  use NukakApiWeb, :router
  # use Pow.Phoenix.Router

  pipeline :api do
    plug :accepts, ["json"]
    plug NukakApiWeb.ApiAuthPlug, otp_app:  :nukak_api
  end

scope "/api", NukakApiWeb do
    pipe_through [:api]
    resources "/customers", CustomerController, only: [:show, :index]
    # resources "/customers/:id", CustomerController, :show
 end

end

customer_controller.ex:

defmodule NukakApiWeb.CustomerController do
  use NukakApiWeb, :controller
# I know the following line should better go on a different file. Just adding it here for simplicity.
 def get_customer!(id), do: Repo.get!(Customer, id)
 def list_customers do
   Repo.all(Customer)
end

  def index(conn, _params) do
    customers = list_customers()
    render(conn, "index.json", customers: customers)
  end

  def show(conn, %{"id" => id}) do
    customer = get_customer!(id)
    render(conn, "show.json", customer: customer)
  end

customer_view.ex:

defmodule NukakApiWeb.CustomerView do
  use NukakApiWeb, :view
  alias NukakApiWeb.CustomerView

  def render("index.json", %{customers: customers}) do
    %{data: render_many(customers, CustomerView, "customer.json")}
  end

  def render("show.json", %{customer: customer}) do
    %{data: render_one(customer, CustomerView, "customer.json")}
  end

  def render("customer.json", %{customer: customer}) do
    %{id: customer.id,
      name: customer.name,
      plate: customer.plate,
      carmaker: customer.carmaker,
      active: customer.active}
  end
  end

I tried following this guy idea but I got lost in the assign() function:

def valid_filters(conn, params) do
  filters = Enum.filter(conn.params, fn({k, v}) ->
    Enum.member?(params, k)
  end)
  conn |> assign(:filters, filters)
end

There is the json_api_query_builder package but it does not seem to be compatible with ecto 3.

Anyway, if anybody can give me a hint on what is it that I have to do I would really appreciate it.

Thanks very much!

2

So I think in the controller a actions you can access both body params and query params using the conn value.
Take a look at some of the answers here

3

Thanks @crisefd. I am trying to understand how I can use it. Due to my lacke of experience, still many concepts are very unclear to me. Actually, I think the concept is quite clear, the actual implementation (to me) is a bit more challenging. I’ll work on it and report if successful. Thanks again.

5

You’re close! Add these to your CustomerController:

import Ecto.Query

# Correct, this should go in the `Customer` context along with the `Ecto.Query` import.
def get_customers_by(keyword) do
    query =
          from c in Customer,
            where: keyword,
            select: c

    Repo.all(query)
end

def show(conn, %{"carmaker" => carmaker}) do
    customers = get_customers_by(carmaker: carmaker)
    response = Jason.encode!(customers)

    # This is what I've done, but I don't know views at all.
    conn
    |> put_resp_content_type("application/json")
    |> send_resp(200, response)
  end

Validating filters is a good idea but random filters just won’t match anything currently. Do you want people to be able to build queries dynamically via the API?

Looks cool but once you get the hang of it building an API like this is fun and quick to do yourself, plus you’ll get to know Phoenix and Ecto much better. Plus you may not want people doing dynamic queries :man_shrugging:

6

Thanks very much @chasers, this is of great help!