Backend and Frontend co-operation

In our rails applications, I generally work on the backend (models and controllers) while another developer focuses on the (Views + JS magic).

Generally he gets all the fields available from a model by looking at the schema.rb file, methods in the models or by asking me specifically for something.

Is there something more structured that we can use to co-operate?

That's a really great question. Personally, I like to either record example urls and JSON that the frontend devs can work with or I'll give them example code that works already that they can modify. It all kind of depends on the situation and what we're trying to accomplish. A lot of times we'll pair programming at that point to hand make sure we're both on the same page and the integration can work well between the two.

What issues are you guys running into with your approach?