Rails respond_with — why does POST return a URL instead of the data?

Question

This is a question \"why does it work this way\", not \"how do I make this work\".

My app is calling a third party REST API that returns JSON, and returning the result a

Answer 1

The 'why' has been answered excellently by @david-james. This is just a short 'how' to answer via respond_with:

class Api::V1::UsersController < ApplicationController

  respond_to :json

  def create
    @user = User.create(...)
    respond_with @user, location: url_for([:api, :v1, @user])
  end

end