Populr.me Ruby Gem

A rubygem for interacting with the Populr.me API from Ruby apps. If you’re just getting started, be sure to check out the sample app at github.com/populr/populr_api_ruby_sample

Getting an API Key

Read the ‘Getting Started’ section of the API documentation, which explains how to get an API key and create API templates on the Populr.me website: developers.populr.me/api

Retrieving and Listing Pops and Templates

# Create an API Connection
require 'populr'
@populr = Populr.new(<Your API Key>)

# List the templates in your populr account
@populr.templates.each do |template|
  puts template.id
end

# Fetch a specific template
@template = @populr.templates.first
@template = @populr.templates.find(params[:template_id])

# List the pops that have already been created with a template
@template.pops.each do |pop|
  puts pop.id
end

# List pops 100-150
@template.pops.range(100,50).each do |pop|
  puts pop.id
end

Creating & Publishing a Pop

# You must always create a pop from an existing template created
# on Populr.me
template = @populr.templates.find(<Template ID>)
pop = Pop.new(template)

# Assign it's title, slug, and other properties
p.slug = params[:pop_data]['slug']

# Fill in {{tags}} in the body of the pop using the
# values the user has provided in the pop_data parameter
for tag,value in params[:pop_data]['tags']
  p.populate_tag(tag, value)
end

# Optionally set a password that will be required to view
p.password = 'pass'

# Save the pop. This commits our changes above.
p.save!

# Publish the pop. This makes it available at http://p.domain/p.slug.
# The pop model is updated with a valid published_pop_url after this line!
p.publish!

Creating Assets

# Create a new image asset and fill the region named
# 'profile-image-region' with it.
file = File.open('my-image.jpg', 'r')
asset = @populr.images.build(file, 'Image Name').save!
p.populate_region('profile-image-region', asset)

# Fill in an embed regions by creating a new embed asset with HTML
html = "My HTML"
asset = @populr.embeds.build(html).save!
p.populate_region('youtube-region', asset)

Creating Tracers

# Create a new tracer for our pop. This will allow us to collect
# analytics when users visit the page with the tracer code added.
tracer = pop.tracers.build
tracer.name = '[email protected]'
tracer.enable_webhook('http://mysite.com/tracer_viewed/%{pop-id}')
tracer.save!

# The URL (with the ?tc tracer extension) to give to the user.
traced_url = #{pop.published_pop_url}?#{tracer.code}

Retrieving Tracer Analytics

pop = @populr.pops.find('<Pop ID>')
tracer = pop.tracers.find('<Tracer ID>')

# Fetch the number of views
puts tracer.views

# Fetch the number of clicks for a particular asset we placed in a region
puts tracer.clicks_for_asset('<Asset ID>')

# Fetch the number of clicks within an entire region (for example, clicks on 
# a set of documents that were all placed in the same region.)
puts tracer.clicks_for_region('profile-image-region')

Best Practices & Tips

Create template pops using the Populr.me website that have everything except what you need to insert via the API.
Show a list of available templates to users, or store template IDs on your server or hardcode them into your app. You cannot perform ‘where’ queries using the Populr API, so you can’t retrieve pops or template by name or labels.
Avoid creating the same asset each time you create a pop. If you plan to put the same image, document or embed in multiple pops, create the assets ahead of time and insert them into each pop.
Consider using the tracer name property to store extra information, such as a user ID or email address.
Do not create hundreds of pops in a hard loop. If you make an exessive number of requests in a small period of time, your API access may be suspended. Use Resque or a rake task to push pop creation to the background.

Contributing to the Populr.me Ruby Gem

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn’t been implemented or the bug hasn’t been fixed yet.
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn’t requested it and/or contributed it.
Fork the project.
Start a feature/bugfix branch.
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution.
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.