What does the render function references with "show.json"

Questions / Help
1

Hello ! I am a bit confused as to what the template arguments “index.json”, “show.json” and such reference in the render/3 function. From my understanding of the documentation ( Phoenix.Controller — Phoenix v1.6.15 ), the template argument of the render function should point to a .html file in the templates directory.
Could someone please explain what exactly this argument does ? Apologies for this stupid question, but I’m really confused.
Thank you !

2

Hello and welcome,

.json is for json API. You don’t need a template to render json, the view will be enough. For example…

  def render("index.json", %{users: users}) do
    %{data: render_many(users, UserView, "user.json")}
  end

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

  def render("user.json", %{user: user}) do
    %{id: user.id}
  end

It is used in the view render function, for pattern matching

3

Thank you !