REST

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REST
REST in Rails and ActiveResource, too!
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Agenda

• What is REST?
• Why REST?
• Hows it fit into Rails?
• Workshop
• Things to watch out for

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Whats REST?

• Representational State Transfer
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_Stat
  e_Transfer

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Why REST?

• Clarifying, simplifying your architecture
• Think web services
• Its not SOAP
• Its not XML-RPC
• Its just HTTP
• Curl, WireShark can be your friends
• Even I can form HTTP requests on the command
  line! (maybe sometimes)

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Why REST?

• Separation of concerns
• URIs identify resources
• HTTP verb/method identifies operation

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Why REST?

• Default RailsGET /people/show/1
• RESTfulGET /people/1

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Why REST?

• Default RailsPOST /people/delete/1
• RESTfulDELETE /people/1

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What does it mean to my Rails app?

• Server side
• Simply RESTful plugin
• Now in Rails, as of 1.2ish?
• Client side
• ActiveResource (ARes)

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Simply RESTful

• Helps you organize.
• Two (or three!) big tools
• Routes
• respond_to
• (and scaffold_resource, too!)
• Cheat sheet

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Podcast Example

• From Peepcode
• restful_auth
• Nested models
• and more!

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ActiveResource

• Client consumption maps remote REST services
  into local objects
• Just like what ActiveRecord does for databases
  and SQL!

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Getting ActiveResource

• 1.) Edge Rails
• 2.) Get it yourselfsvn co http//dev.rubyonrail
  s.org/svn/rails/trunk/activeresource
  APP_ROOT/vendor/rails/activeresource
  RailsInitializer.run do config
  config.load_paths W( RAILS_ROOT/vendor/rail
  s/activeresource/lib )end

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ActiveResource Examples

• Person ActiveResourceStruct.new do person
  person.uri "http//api.myremote.com/people"
  person.credentials name gt "me", password
  gt "pwend
• person Person.find(1)GET http//api.myremote.co
  m/people/1lt Bob XML, HTML, some
  representation
• person.name "Jason" person.save!PUT
  http//api.myremote.com/people/1gt Jasonlt
  Location http//api.myremote.com/people/1

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ContactsAPI

• ActiveResource client lib example
• http//contactsapi.com/docs/activeresource-client

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Further Reading

• Another UG Presentation
• http//ryandaigle.com/articles/2007/3/14/rest-acti
  veresource
• Code
• Beast, a complete CRUD-based forum application
• A CRUD Controller that you can inherit from
  instead of using a scaffold
• Rick Olson Plugins
• Rails Core Plugins
• Ideas
• An article that inspired the idea in Rails
• Using cURL with REST Methods
• Other REST Articles
• Changes in Edge
• How to use it
• Scaffold plugin
• Success story from Scott Raymond
• Google cache of Scott Raymonds blog, with
  comments
• Discussion about the Blinksale API
• Lectures
• Chris Abad on REST