I have just completed Hartl's book on rails. Following the examples have been helpful and I have been able to build some very basic functionality for my app. However, there is this API I would like to use, and have been granted a key for the API. I have absolutely no idea how to start implementing the API. The other stuff surrounding API's have been helpful, but I literally am stuck on what the very first step should be to begin implementing the API.
I need for a user to be able to sign up and authenticate, then supply data that will be tracked through the external API. I've got the user sign up and authenticate stuff down pat, just need to know what the very first baby step to using this API should be.
The logic behind the answer would be equally helpful.
You can use ActiveResource for your model and point it to the external API. This is useful if your model uses an external data source.
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveResource/Base.html
If the external API you want to use is a well known, there is a good chance that there is already a gem for interaction with that API.
If you only need to send some data to the external API but your model does not use it as its source, you can use an HTTP client like Faraday https://github.com/technoweenie/faraday
Related
I would like to access my Google Drive account via their API inside of a Rails application. The idea is that I will store files, but I don't believe I need to implement any authorisation for it (like with Oauth2, for example), since I only want to access my account.
I have been researching for 2 days, but the Google documentation seems very confused and not very clear.
I started in vain with this guide https://developers.google.com/drive/api/v3/quickstart/ruby and tried to co-opt it for use inside of Rails, but since it relies on storing a token file returned upon authentication, I figured this wasn't really the right approach.
I don't have any code to share, just looking for some clarity on how I can achieve what I'm trying to do, or indeed if it's even possible.
Additional Info:
I'm using Devise for my own authentication, so implementing omniauth through that would be an option if it's necessary. I looked through some documentation around that which Devise has on their side, but I didn't want to go through that (it seemed like a lot) before knowing it was the correct course of action.
You need OAuth 2.0 to authorize requests on the Drive API as described on the documentation. In that link, you can find: «All requests to the Drive API must be authorized by an authenticated user».
To complete that authorization process, you should follow the instructions on the Drive API Ruby Quickstart linked on your question. Generating and saving a credentials.json for later use is the normal approach in this situation. Here you can read about using OAuth 2.0 over different scenarios.
I hope to have cleared your doubts on this topic, but feel free to ask further questions.
I implemented a simple API.ai bot and I wanted to add it to google home platform but I really need help for the linking account part.
I don't understand if I need to implement an oauth2 protocol for my service or not. Is there any exemple or framework that allow implement this linking account step (any language is ok, it's just for a simple POC).
My goal is to ask my bot some informations and send him some orders to achieve simple processing on a server.
Hope that someone can help me, add a simple bot to google home to access and modify some informations in a server isn't really easy for me ^^
As #Leon noted, you will need to implement the OAuth2 server yourself. The Actions on Google documentation give details about what they are expecting and what steps you can do to implement it yourself. The Authorization Code flow is slightly preferred (additional features from the Assistant will require it in the future), but you're also allowed to use the https://developers.google.com/actions/identity/oauth2-implicit-flow if you wish since it is slightly easier.
There are several packages that are out there that allow you to provide OAuth2, but require you to build the connection to your own account database. I've seen packages for .NET and JavaScript, but it shouldn't be too difficult to find one that meets your needs or to write one yourself.
If you need to authenticate the user, then you will need your own OAuth server. How to hook that up to an action is described in the docs: https://developers.google.com/actions/develop/identity/account-linking
If however, this is just a personal project and you want to test it on your own device, then account linking is not necessary for you to get the action to work. You simply need to hook up your server logic to the action fulfillment. We recommend that you use the API.AI Actions integration. The docs cover how to do that: https://developers.google.com/actions/develop/apiai/dialogs-and-fulfillment
How can I access the Appery.io (or any future db) that is exposed to the REST API using RoR?
So I have an app i built using Appery.io and I also created a test app using RoR that I would like to use to pull information from the Appery.io db and display it on my RoR app.
I am somewhat familiar with REST and get the idea of what it is doing but I am not to certain on how to connect or make a connection from my RoR app to my Appery.io app. Appery.io has the following documentation for their db api, Appery.io DB API .
I have been looking around and also have seen people mention the following gems for HTTP request:
Weary
HTTParty
RestClient
Would I use one of those? I also read about using Active Resource as a possible solution?
Any help with getting started or a tutorial or article to point me in the right direction would be very helpful.
Thanks!
You won't be establishing an ongoing connection, each request/response will be a single query to your Appery DB. You authenticate those calls using a custom header with API key as defined in the documentation. There's an example using cURL that might be a good place to start playing with the API before you pull it into your RoR app. That example shows you how to get your key, too.
It looks like you can use the predefined APIs, or you can define a custom REST API associated with your Appery app? Instructions for building an API appear to be here.
Once you get the calls working from cURL (or other web request client of your choice), adding the calls to the RoR app should be more straightforward. Any of those gems could probably ease that process: I've only used RestClient personally, but found it very straightforward.
Any of those call methods (cURL, other clients, the gems, etc) will allow you specify your URI, method (e.g. GET or POST), headers, request body (where appropriate), and will allow you to examine your response. Take a look at the gem documentation to see how those map exactly - it will vary slightly from tool to tool.
If you don't have prior experience with calling external APIs, and would like a conceptual explanation, I like this article as a (very short!) beginner's guide.
It's now trivial to create a web app that sits atop Parse.com. Now that I have this webapp, I want to expose parts of it to other developers via an oauth accesible api. So, they can develop an app that lets my site users 'give them permission' via oauth and they can now access the api.
How would I start going about doing this?
Update: After #Mubix response, I felt the following clarification would help
Currently I am accessing Parse from the server via a REST api, to get around any javascript security issues re:api keys etc. So, the api would be served of a server other than Parse. Also, the server code is in javascript / nodejs. I came across https://github.com/jaredhanson/oauth2orize which seems a likely candidate, was wondering how others are doing it and if anyone has actually gone a further step and integrated Parse access.
Hmmm .. Intereesting question!
Legal:
First of all their ToS doesn't seem to prohibit what you are trying to do but you should read it carefully before you start.
Implementation:
While parse doesn't provide feature to build your own APIs you could implement something yourself. You could treat the third party developers as users of your app. And you can use the ACL to control access.
Problems:
I don't see any way to implement oAuth entirely within parse.
How will third party apps access your API? Ideally you would like them to use a REST interface but with the parse.com REST API you won't be able to manage access to different parts of your data.
Conclusion:
It seems like too much trouble to implement the API entirely within parse. I would suggest that you write a thin API layer that takes care of auth and uses parse as the backend. You can use one of the service side libraries available for parse. eg. PHP Library, Node Parse.
My question is not about FourSquare API and its functions, but about more simpler details that are not well explained on Foursquare API explanations. Thank you very much in advance if someone wants to help me with this doubts:
Foursquare API is a framework you can use to build applications for mobile devices, above of IOS and Android, so i can imagine that they have API for IOS (Objective-C) and Android (Java), right?
From API Doc: "Be sure to note that although API requests are against api.foursquare.com, OAuth token and authorization requests are against foursquare.com.". Does it mean that if i want to use FourSquare app, the users has to have an account on FourSquare?
From API Doc: "For example, if you write an iPhone application, every user who logs in with their foursquare account will be able to make up to 500 users/* requests and up to 500 venues/* requests, etc." I dont understand this sentence. Does it mean that for example, if you use an API method request like "checkins.add()", this method create two methods? one against api.foursquare.com to monitor the API limit requests, and another to your Web Application Server?
So as a question related to the third one, where do you have to store your database? is it stored on Foursquare cloud database because you are loggin there, or you have to create your own Web Service application with its own SQL database?
From API Doc: "All requests are simple GET or POST requests that return JSON or JSONP respones", so i can imagine that the Web Application Service should understand JSON. Well, my main question is, can i use Ruby on Rails to build the Web Application Service and Web Page frontend? I am seeing that there are some wrapps for RoR designed from third companies, but are not official and doesnt cover all the 2.0 API, just the ones they needed for their services.
If i want to create an app using FourSquare API, what do you advice me to use as a programming language/framework for the Web Service Application? the WSA that has to process the JSON requests and later store them on the database, interaction with users on the WebPage, etc.
i am so sorry if my questions are so simple, but i dont have any other place of this level of expertise.
thank you very very much in advance.
The API is REST/JSON based, which means that any language that can do an HTTP request and parse a string can be used. There are Java and iOS libraries available. But you could use just about anything - curl with bash would be a bit extreme but if that floats your boat...
For some of the APIs (search a venue, for example) you do not necessarily need a FourSquar OAuth user token. For others (like checkin) a FourSquare token is required. For any API calls that require a userid, your users will have to be FourSquare users and "trust" your application with their FourSquare data.
Only requests to FourSquare is counted. So if you do a single call to checkins.add() it counts as one call for the user that is doing the checkin. I wouldn't worry about the limits. As long as you're usage of the API is sensible they will not be a problem. And if they do become a problem and you're doing something extraordinarily cool, the folks at FourSquare might be sympathetic.
You have to create your own web server with your own database to store some information. The OAuth token is one. You probably want to cache venue information here for short periods as well.
Yes, your webapp will need to be able to understand JSON. Ruby has excellent JSON support - look for the json gem.
It is really difficult to suggest a language or framework without knowing what it is that you're trying to do. I wouldn't choose a framework based on the fact that you want to use FourSquare (anything will do) but rather on your experience and the unique features of your application. You mentioned RoR before - that would definitely work.