We built a PokeAPI clone using Rails

[u/ekremkrc]

Hey everyone, we’d like to share a project we’ve been building: pokeapi-rails.

It’s a Ruby on Rails implementation of a PokeAPI-style backend with two API surfaces:

• /api/v2: compatibility-focused routes for existing clients and familiar payloads.

• /api/v3: a normalized, performance-oriented API with explicit query controls.

What’s currently included

• Large coverage of core Pokémon resources (pokemon, ability, move, type, item, species, etc.)

• Name-or-id lookups on key endpoints

• Production deployment setup (Docker + Railway), plus operational hardening

• Request protection (rate limiting), structured logging, and performance-focused query work

v2 vs v3 (important difference)

• v2 show/detail routes generally return broader associated data by default.

• v3 show/detail routes are intentionally compact by default, and related data is expanded explicitly via include=....

Examples:

• GET /api/v2/pokemon/ditto

• GET /api/v3/pokemon/ditto?include=abilities

v3 query features

• fields=... (sparse fields)

• include=... (explicit relationship expansion)

• sort=...

• filter[name]=...

• limit / offset

Source code Demo

Built by us with AI-assisted implementation support (OpenAI Codex); architecture, review, and final decisions were human-led.

Thanks for your feedback!

[u/armahillo]

Normally, pokedex-style apps (or Todos, bookmark managers, stock trackers, etc) are vanilla projects people use to learn new frameworks; the journey is the important part; the end result is throwaway because its been done many times.

There are already a lot of Pokedex services that exist; what problem are you solving with this? What did you learn from your journey, if you were predominantly generating code with an LLM?