NameError: uninitialized constant JSONAPI::ResourceController in Rails 7.1

[jagthedrummer]

This issue is a (choose one):

• Problem/bug report.
• Feature request.
• Request for support. Note: Please try to avoid submitting issues for support requests. Use Gitter instead.

Checklist before submitting:

• I've searched for an existing issue.
• I've NOT asked my question on Gitter because Gitter seems to be abandoned by the core team. There a lots of questions posted there that have no responses at all.
• I've included a complete bug report template. This step helps us and allows us to see the bug without trying to reproduce the problem from your description. It helps you because you will frequently detect if it's a problem specific to your project.
• The feature I'm asking for is compliant with the JSON:API spec.

Description

In trying to update to Rails 7.1 I'm running into random instances of this error when running my test suite.

Error:
Jsonapi::V1::TeamProjectsControllerTest#test_should_not_create_for_a_forbidden_team:
NameError: uninitialized constant JSONAPI::ResourceController
    app/controllers/jsonapi/v1/base_controller.rb:3:in `<main>'
    app/controllers/jsonapi/v1/team_projects_controller.rb:1:in `<main>'
    test/controllers/jsonapi/v1/team_projects_controller_test.rb:126:in `block in <class:TeamProjectsControllerTest>'

Sometimes there will be 2 of them, other times 20 or 30.

Via some trial and error I discovered that if I alter my BaseController to look like this:

class Jsonapi::V1::BaseController < ActionController::Base
  include JSONAPI::ActsAsResourceController
  # ...
end

Instead of this:

class Jsonapi::V1::BaseController < JSONAPI::ResourceController
  # ...
end

then the random errors go away.

I also noticed that these errors were only happening locally, and not in CI, and so I tried setting config.eager_load = true in config/environments/test.rb which also made the errors go away.

I poked around this gem a little bit and I think that this block of code isn't exactly working as expected in Rail 7.1.

https://github.com/cerebris/jsonapi-resources/blob/e92afc690f5c53da6f4fa5e91ca72a50873390be/lib/jsonapi-resources.rb#L12-L18

Ruby: 3.3.6
Rails: 7.1.5.1

[jagthedrummer]

For anyone else that runs across this it's worth mentioning that another possible app-side fix is manually requiring ResourceController before using it.

require 'jsonapi/resource_controller'

class Jsonapi::V1::BaseController < JSONAPI::ResourceController
  # ...
end

[zalom]

For anyone else that runs across this it's worth mentioning that another possible app-side fix is manually requiring ResourceController before using it.

require 'jsonapi/resource_controller'

class Jsonapi::V1::BaseController < JSONAPI::ResourceController

...

end

When did you switch to Zeitwerk? Was it before upgrading to Rails 7.1? Also, was your config.load_defaults set to 5.1 or 5.2?
One app I work with uses Rails 6.1, but the defaults are set to 5.1 (translation: it does not use Zeitwerk). So this same issue surfaces up, and the apparent fix was to quit sessions (Docker Compose...) and reload, and then it stops for a while.

Of course, as your suggestion says, the fix is to require 'jsonapi/resource_controller'.

The thing is, as soon as I switch to use Zetwerk (config.load_defaults = 6.0), the bin/rails zeitwerk:check immediately fails in the base controller where it inherits from < JSONAPI::ResourceController.

[takaokouji]

We've fixed this issue in our fork (speee/jsonapi-resources).

Root cause: The ActiveSupport.on_load(:action_controller_base) lazy loading mechanism creates a race condition with Zeitwerk in Rails 7.1+.

Solution: Remove the conditional lazy loading and always require ResourceController directly. This eliminates the race condition.

Fix: speee#18

If you're experiencing this issue, you can:

1. Try our fork: https://github.com/speee/jsonapi-resources
2. Add require 'jsonapi/resource_controller' before using it
3. Use the ActsAsResourceController mixin instead

Hope this helps!