Rails: Sending POST data to both local and remote server - ruby-on-rails

I have a form which I'd like to save through a standard RESTful rails pattern, but I also need to insert a lead into SalesForce via post. Admittedly I'm quite a newbie on this - any suggestions on the most elegant way to do this?
Cheers...

You receive the form and then, inside your controller, you make a call to Salesforce, possibly using something like RestClient
def create
#your_object = MyObject.new(params[:my_object])
#your_object.save
SalesforceService.post( #your_object )
redirect_to home_path
end
You could also use Resque to make this call in a background worker to make your requests faster.

You can do something like the following after your model save is successful.
res = Net::HTTP.post_form(URI.parse(SALESFORCE_URL),
{'param_name1' => param_value1})
result = res.body
Or use a salesforce gem to do that update. Something like http://rubygems.org/gems/activesalesforce

Related

How to connect 2 rails 5 apps together API (rails) and front-end (rails as well)

As i mentioned on the question title, I want to know the best approach to get this to work and i'll need and example ( very simple one as the follow: )
Let's say i have an API which has 1 controller and 1 action for example simplicity
root 'main#index'
and inside the index action i have
def index
#date = Data.today
end
Then i have another rails app which will work for front-end rendering
How can i pass this #date as JSON from the API to the other app to render it ?
Should i have same controller on the other app ?
How can i connect and send http request and receive response ?
Thanks in advance
For such a simple example, you can do something as simple as:
def index
#date = Date.today
respond_to do |format|
format.json #date
end
end
However, you're most likely going to want to deal with more complicated JSON responses, so before long you'll probably want to use something like the Jbuilder gem or ActiveModel Serializers (my preferred approach).
On the other end, your front-end will need to make an HTTP GET request. Lots of ways (and gems) to do this, but one common approach is just to use the built in Net::HTTP class.
require 'net/http'
url = URI.parse('http://backend.dev/main/index')
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.to_s)
response = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) do |http|
http.request(request)
end
raise response.body.inspect
In your situation, a better approach might be to use the Active Resource gem. This gem allows you to create models that are backed by a REST API rather than a database. For example, if your API app provides basic Create-Read-Update-Destroy actions for a particular model (let's call it Widget) at the following URLs:
GET http://backend.dev/widget # listing of widgets
GET http://backend.dev/widget/1 # Read for widget id: 1
POST http://backend.dev/widget # Create new widget
UPDATE http://backend.dev/widget/1 # Update widget id: 1
DELETE http://backend.dev/widget/1 # Destroy widget id: 1
then in your front-end app you could declare an Active Resource like this:
class Widget < ActiveResource::Base
self.site = "http://backend.dev"
end
which will auto-magically access all of those methods in your API, and behave much like a regular Active Record model. That way, you basically design your front-end app like a "normal" rails app, but using ActiveResource-based models in place of ActiveRecord.
I would note, however, that a more common thing to do these days would be to build your API in Rails, and build your front-end with client-side Javascript, using something like JQuery or Angular to make requests from the API. I'm not sure what you're gaining by splitting API and front-end, where both of them are Rails apps - unless you've got a compelling reason, I'd just build one Rails app that handles both API and front-end, or build a Rails API + Angular (or similar) front-end.

Rails API and Strong PARAMS

I am trying to create an api to create record Foo using the rails-api gem.
I initially ran the generator command to tell rails to create a controller for me and it created this:
def create
#foo = Foo.new(foo_params)
#foo.save
respond_with(#foo)
end
And this (Strong params):
def foo_params
params.require(:foo).permit(:bar)
end
This is pretty standard stuff and will work when using form_for to submit data to the create method.
In my case, I'm creating a stand-alone API web service that will only interact via external API calls.
So the issue that I'm experiencing, is I don't know how to post the :bar param via API. I tried posting a :bar param, but this leads to a 'param is missing or the value is empty: foo' error. I understand why this is happening, but I have no idea how to get around this...
Is there a better way to do this or should I provide the api param in a different way?
PS. Currently my api POST call looks like this:
http://localhost:3000/api/v1/foo.json?bar=test#mail.com
you cannot use the ?+argument at the end of the url for a POST HTTP request, it's only for a GET request.
You must use the data component of the HTTP call, that is not embedded in the URL
therefore, you cannot just make this from your browser address bar and must use curl or a great tool as Postman (free on the chrome App Store)
and in this data field, you can include the object you want to post (postman gives you a neat key value interface to do so)
let me know if you need more details on the curl function for command line calls, but I recommend that you use a nice tool as Postman, so useful if you're not used to these calls
EDIT : this is the URL to get Postman : https://www.getpostman.com

Simple way for async/event driven request Ruby on Rails site

I am trying to implement a simple solution to help with some behavior. Basically I want to create a listener on a particular url, like
localhost:3000/listen
I have a callback with a 3rd party service that is sending JSON as a post request. In my rails routes I have the route setup, to accept a post request to that namespace.
The thing that I want to happen, is for some logic to be run anytime a new post comes in and to run that logic async without any disruption to the normal web service. For example, the post request will contain some data, if the data has a boolean "true", we need to fire off a Rails Mailer. I normally could do this with a simple rails controller action but this is not correct.
Any thoughts on the best approach to handle this? Would this best with a gem like eventmachine? If anyone could give their feedback to implement a simple solution that would be great!
I would look at your background jobs. I am a Sidekiq fan, and popular alternatives are Resque and DelayedJob.
Your controller will receive the response, and schedule it to be performed in the background. That will send out the mail (or whatever you need it to do) asynchronously.
class CallbackController < ApplicationController
def listen_third_party
data = params.slice([:params, :you, :care, :about])
if data[:boolean_field] == true
CallbackMailer.perform_async(data)
end
end
end

Rails Ajax approach without database

The different Rails 3/Ajax solutions I have come across show examples that retrieve data from a database.
I would like to make an Ajax call and have the server return data that does not come from a database. The data actually comes from REST aware pages on the web.
Any suggestions or examples?
See this example:
# Use the class methods to get down to business quickly
response = HTTParty.get('http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.json')
puts response.body, response.code, response.message, response.headers.inspect
With HTTParty gem.
You will return results as usual with Rails, for example, you could call in your controller:
render json: response.body
If you want it AJAX you can call this controller I mention with:
$.get('my_rails_route');
Check your requirements, you could simply do:
$.get('http://twitter.com/statuses/public_timeline.json');
Without passing by Rails server.

Make Rails return response from other local URL

I want a /plan method to return a json object that's itself returned by another local (but belonging to another web app in java) URL (let's call it /plan2 for the sake of this question).
What I want is not a redirect but really to have /plan return the data as it is returned by /plan2, to which I'm appending a bunch of other keys. Since the request is local, would using Net::HTTP be overkill? What are my options, considering I'd also like to send an HTTP Accept header along.
Shooting in the dark here, but I am assuming that /plan belongs to public Rails app and the /plan2 is the url from another web app (maybe not even Rails) on the same server accessible by Rails app but not publicly available. If this is the case, then yes, you can get the response, but I would suggest rather OpenURI or Mechanize than Net::HTTP. If you put it in respond_to JSON format block then everything should be fine with Accept header also.
are you speaking of re-using functionality of another controller-method?
there is no standard way of doing this in rails. you could either put the common functionality into a module and include it this way, or use inheritance if the functionality is in another controller. if it's the same controller class, you could just call the method.
if it's a "private" url, how are you going to call it via http?!
I would suggest encapsulating whatever functionality /plan2 uses and simply re-use that in /plan1
But if you just want to get it to work...
class PlanController < ApplicationController
def plan1
plan2(extra_parameter_1: true, extra_parameter_2: 'hello')
end
def plan2(extra = {})
params.merge!(extra)
# Whatever your code was before...
end
end

Resources