Rails 6 inflection error on ActiveResource::Formats::XmlFormat

[EmmaB]

When I make a call such as ShopifyAPI::Collect.create(collect) or ShopifyAPI::CustomCollection.find(collection.id).update_attributes(published: nil) and get an error response, I get the following:

NameError (uninitialized constant ActiveResource::Formats::XMLFormat)
Did you mean?  ActiveResource::Formats::XmlFormat

This is because my inflections.rb initializer contains:

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections do |inflect|
  inflect.acronym "XML"
  ...
end

The call to ActiveResource should probably insulate itself from local inflection overrides, shouldn't it?

[tanema]

Why do you think this has to do with the Inflections? I am not sure why active resource would have any interaction with ActiveSupport::Inflector at all currently. What lead you to believe this?

[EmmaB]

Well, the error is pretty clear: it's trying to call ActiveResource::Formats::XMLFormat, and it can only be doing that because our repo defines XML as an acronym. But the class is XmlFormat .

Maybe it jumps out to me because I saw lots of these type of errors when upgrading from Rails 5 to 6, getting Zeitwerk to work.

[bittersweet]

I wanted to add some context here as I found this issue via google (related to ActiveSupport::Inflector ActiveResource queries), I am not using shopify_api myself though.

We also recently defined the XML acronym for rails 6/zeitwerk related purposes. ActiveResource indeed uses inflections to autoload the xml and json formatters:
https://github.com/rails/activeresource/blob/dedecf90996622776b7aa0e54957ffc8fb3ac2f9/lib/active_resource/formats.rb#L3-L14

    # Lookup the format class from a mime type reference symbol. Example:
    #
    #   ActiveResource::Formats[:xml]  # => ActiveResource::Formats::XmlFormat
    #   ActiveResource::Formats[:json] # => ActiveResource::Formats::JsonFormat
    def self.[](mime_type_reference)
      ActiveResource::Formats.const_get(ActiveSupport::Inflector.camelize(mime_type_reference.to_s) + "Format")
    end

So if you have defined XML in the inflections list, that results in:

>> ActiveSupport::Inflector.camelize("xml".to_s) + "Format"
=> "XMLFormat"

For our project we have worked around it with a quick patch:

module ActiveResource
  module Formats
    XMLFormat = XmlFormat
  end
end

That's not great of course, but we want to migrate off ActiveResource at some point for this project so it's good enough for now.

[odlp]

Posting to improve the odds of a hit for anyone searching; this impacts the JSON format too when an inflection is configured

NameError: uninitialized constant ActiveResource::Formats::JSONFormat
Did you mean?  ActiveResource::Formats::JsonFormat

[github-actions]

This issue is stale because it has been open for 90 days with no activity. It will be closed if no further action occurs in 14 days.

[github-actions]

We are closing this issue because it has been inactive for a few months.
This probably means that it is not reproducible or it has been fixed in a newer version.
If it’s an enhancement and hasn’t been taken on since it was submitted, then it seems other issues have taken priority.

If you still encounter this issue with the latest stable version, please reopen using the issue template. You can also contribute directly by submitting a pull request– see the CONTRIBUTING.md file for guidelines

Thank you!