Reststop

Reststop makes it easy to write RESTful[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representational_State_Transfer] applications in Camping[http://github.com/camping/camping].

For info and downloads please see github.com/camping/reststop

Authors: Matt Zukowski and Philippe Monnet (see github.com/camping/reststop/commits/master)
Copyright: Copyright © 2010 Urbacon Ltd.
License: MIT License

For an example of a complete Reststop-based Camping app, have a look at github.com/camping/reststop/blob/master/examples/blog.rb

Reststop essentially gives you three things:

1. Camping controllers that respond to the standard REST verbs:

create (POST)
read (GET)
update (PUT)
destroy (DELETE)
list (GET)

Custom actions are also possible. See the Reststop::Controllers#REST method documentation for usage info.

2. Camping views grouped by output format:

Your views module:

module Foobar::Views
  module HTML
    def foo
      html do
        p "Hello World"
      end
    end
  end
  module XML
    def foo
      tag!('foo')
        "Hello World"
      end
    end
  end
end

Your render call:

render(:foo, :XML)

See the Camping#render method documentation for usage info.

3. Nice URLs to bring it all together:

For example a list of kittens in the default format (HTML) is available at:

/kittens

The list, in RSS format:

/kittens.rss

Kitten with id 1, in XML format:

/kittens/1.xml

Using custom action ‘meow’ on kitten with id 1:

/kittens/1/meow

In other words, say you have a “kittens” resource; you can make a GET request to yourapp.com/kittens.xml and get a list of kittens through your Kittens controller’s list, formatted using your XML view module.

Looking for Restr, the very simple REST client?

Due to its popularity, Restr, the “very simple rest client”, has been moved out to its own gem. Restr now lives under rubyforge.org/projects/restr/ and can be installed using:

gem install restr

Restr is basically a wrapper around Ruby’s Net::HTTP, offering a more RESTfully meaningful interface.

See the “Restr documentation” for more info, but here’s a simple example of RESTful interaction with Restr:

require 'restr'
kitten = Restr.get('http://example.com/kittens/1.xml')
puts kitten['name']
puts kitten['colour']
kitten['colour'] = 'black'
kitten = Restr.put('http://example.com/kittens/1.xml', kitten)

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.