Content-Type application/json by default in Rails 5

Imagine you generate Rails API only app (rails new --api) and now you want all the requset been considered as JSON content-type (even if the header is not present in the request)

So when you do:

curl -XPOST localhost:3000/email_authentication -d '{"email": "tomas"}'

… it would be same as doing:

curl -XPOST localhost:3000/email_authentication -d '{"email": "tomas"}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json'

Rails by default has content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Now you may see some tutorials that poins you to just do:

 # app/controllers/application_controller.rb
 class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
		respond_to :json
		before_action :set_default_response_format

		private

		def set_default_response_format
			request.format = :json
		end
  # ...

BUT THIS WILL NOT WORK IN Rails API only app. It seems there is some middleware missing.

Long story short you can create a middleware that will translate default Rails header to be Content-Type: application/json for requests:

# config/application.rb
# ...
require './lib/middleware/consider_all_request_json_middleware'
# ...

module MyApplication
	# ...
  class Application < Rails::Application
		# ...
		config.middleware.insert_before(ActionDispatch::Static,ConsiderAllRequestJsonMiddleware)
		# ...

# lib/middleware/consider_all_request_json_middleware.rb
class ConsiderAllRequestJsonMiddleware
  def initialize app
    @app = app
  end

  def call(env)
    if env["CONTENT_TYPE"] == 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded'
      env["CONTENT_TYPE"] = 'application/json'
    end
    @app.call(env)
  end
end