Serialize from hash

[glaucocustodio]

Suppose I have:

class Foo
  include Surrealist
  json_schema do
    { foo: String }
  end
end

I can't serialize passing a hash (because the gem expect methods):

Foo.new({ foo: "bar" }).surrealize # crash!

Do you plan add support for hash? I've created the thin wrapper below and it works:

class HashBased
  include Surrealist

  attr_reader :hash

  def initialize(hash = {})
    @hash = hash.deep_symbolize_keys
  end

  def method_missing(method_name, *args)
    if hash.key?(method_name)
      hash[method_name]
    else
      super
    end
  end

  def respond_to_missing?(method_name, _include_private = false)
    hash.key?(method_name)
  end
end

class Foo < HashBased
  json_schema do
    # same as before
  end
end

Foo.new({ foo: "bar" }).surrealize # now it works!

With a simple piece of code like that we can open a bunch of new possibilities.

[nesaulov]

@glaucocustodio, thank you, I guess that's a good feature to have, I would be glad accepting a PR. The only thing to keep in mind is that we don't want to pollute the Surrealist::Builder class, as it's already quite complex. I suggest having a separate class, a HashBuilder for example, which accepts only hashes and validates them directly, not based on method_missing. There will also be a different (and easier) way to validate hash schema, something like

hash.keys.length == schema.keys.length
hash.keys.map(&:to_sym).sort == schema.keys.sort

And we will also need tests covering different cases, apparently.

[glaucocustodio]

Using my wrapper for hash, I just needed to change the check_for_ar method like below to support hash validation:

def check_for_ar(schema, instance, key, value)
  if ar_collection?(instance, key)
    construct_collection(schema, instance, key, value)
  else
    ins = if instance.respond_to?(key)
        instance.send(key)
      elsif instance.is_a?(Hash)
        instance[key]
      else
        instance
      end
    call(value, ins)
  end
end

[nesaulov]

You see, I don't think that 4 if statements in one method is a good thing at all. And the semantics are broken here - why would we check for active record if we are just serializing a hash

[glaucocustodio]

You are right, this code is not very good. I need to take some time to create the HashBuilder.

[nesaulov]

Closing this due to #106