I want to access a URL of another website from one of my models, parse some information and send it back to my user. Is this possible?
For example, the user sends me an address through a POST, and I want to validate the information through a third party website (USPS or GMaps)
What methods would I use to create the request and parse the response?
This is not a redirect. I want to open a new request that is transparent from the client.
There are a lot of libraries to handle this such as:
HTTParty on http://github.com/jnunemaker/httparty
Curb on http://curb.rubyforge.org/
Patron on http://github.com/toland/patron
Example using Patron:
sess = Patron::Session.new
sess.timeout = 10
sess.base_url = "http://myserver.com:9900"
sess.headers['User-Agent'] = 'myapp/1.0'
resp = sess.get("/foo/bar")
if resp.status < 400
puts resp.body
end
Each solution has its own way of handling requests and parsing them as well as variations in their API. Look for what fits your needs the best.
Related
I have a working API call to Twitter. Yay me! But the problem is is that I would much rather refactor it into HTTParty and then I can extend it later. There are an assortment of reasons as to why I am not using something like the twitter gem. They are mainly due to some limitations that need to be overcome for the application.
Here, I have a working piece of code that calls to Twitter:
class Twitter
def validate
consumer_key = OAuth::Consumer.new(
ENV['TWITTER_CONSUMER_KEY'],
ENV['TWITTER_CONSUMER_SECRET']
)
access_token = OAuth::Token.new(
ENV['TWITTER_ACCESS_TOKEN'],
ENV['TWITTER_ACCESS_SECRET']
)
baseurl = "https://api.twitter.com"
address = URI "#{baseurl}/1.1/account/verify_credentials.json"
http = Net::HTTP.new address.host, address.port
http.use_ssl = true
http.verify_mode = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER
request = Net::HTTP::Get.new address.request_uri
request.oauth! http, consumer_key, access_token
http.start
response = http.request request
puts "The response status was #{response.code}"
end
end
It is dependent on only the oath gem.
Key Question: How would one wrap this into HTTParty to make it more modular?
You could just replace NET::HTTP with HTTParty to get the benefits of the latter, or you could go the extra mile and make your Twitter model include HTTParty so that it responds to an ActiveRecord-like interface while it abstracts that in the background is issuing all these API requests.
The decision really depends on your needs. Do you just need to issue a specific request to Twitter and display the results or you want to interact more heavily with Twitter and treat it as a model where you can create, retrieve, delete etc.
Regardless of your choice, I believe that the official readme has all the information you might need (it even has a great example with StackExchange!).
I am currently developing a Rails app in which I need to dynamically send XML request to an external web service. I've never done this before and I a bit lost.
More precisely I need to send requests to my logistic partner when the status of an order is updated. For instance when an order is confirmed I need to send data such as the customer's address, the pickup address, etc...
I intended to use the XML builder to dynamically generate the request and Net:HTTP or HTTParty to post the request, based on this example.
Is that the right way to do so? How can I generate the XML request outside the controller and then use it in HTTParty or Net:HTTP?
Thanks for your help,
Clem
That method will work just fine.
As for how to get the XML where you need it, just pass it around like any other data. You can use the Builder representation, which will automatically convert to a String as appropriate, or you can pass around a stringified (to_s) version of the Builder object.
If, for example, it makes sense for your model (which we'll call OrderStatus) to generate the XML, and for your controller to post the request:
# Model (order_status.rb)
def to_xml
xml = Builder::XmlMarkup.new
... # Your code here
xml
end
# Controller (order_statuses_controller.rb)
def some_method
#order_status = OrderStatus.find(:some_criteria)
... # Your code here
http = Net::HTTP.new("www.thewebservicedomain.com")
response = http.post("/some/path/here", #order_status.to_xml)
end
You may want to wrap the HTTP calls in a begin/rescue/end block and do something with the response, but otherwise it's all pretty straightforward and simple.
Make XML with Builder, then send it down the wire.
In your case it sounds like you may need to send several different requests as the order evolves; in that case:
Plan out what your possible order states are.
Determine what data needs to be sent for each state.
Decide how to represent that state within your models, so you can send the appropriate request when the state changes.
Where my example uses one method to generate XML, maybe you'll want 5 methods to handle 5 possible order states.
I'm trying to set up the linkedin api in a rails 3 app using the linkedin gem. I don't want the user to have to authenticate my app in order for the API to get their info. I only need one piece of their public profile (the headline). So, maybe I should just be using xml or json to pull this off (not exactly sure how to get that with linkedin either).
I have the following in a helper so that I can call linkedin_header() in a loop of users. I only have 'client' as the last line of the following code while debugging. It outputs as expected (#). It seems like I am only a step away from success. How can I access a given users headline? I have tried using "client = client.profile(:url => 'linkedin_user_url')", but that return "Call must be made on behalf of a member".
def linkedin_header(account_user)
user = User.find(account_user)
account = Account.where(:user_id => user, :external_id => 1)
api_key = 'aaaaaaaa'
api_secret = 'bbbbbbbb'
client = LinkedIn::Client.new(api_key, api_secret)
rtoken = client.request_token.token # this returns correctly
rsecret = client.request_token.secret # this returns correctly
client
# client = client.profile(:url => 'linkedin_user_url')
end
So, I guess I have two questions. Is my request (public headline of any user) too simple for the above...should I be using XML or JSON. And, if Im close...can I make the API work for me without the user having to authenticate via linkedin.
Based off of what I read from the LinkedIn API reference (http://developer.linkedin.com/documents/authentication)
You have to make requests to their API only after being authenticated. (Using OAuth Keys) Rather than just grabbing the publicly available information.
It seems like since you want a small piece of information (the public headline of any user) you'd want some sort of implementation like Facebook's OpenGraph. After looking around on LinkedIn, I don't see any sort of public implementation like that.
I would suggest checking out this gem:
https://github.com/yatishmehta27/linkedin-scraper
It seems to be the type of solution you're looking for.
I was using httpi-ntlm ruby gem to get the RSS feeds from the given url, username and password.
I want to know if there is a way I can use all three auth types in my method so that the server picks the setting it prefers???
def get_data url,user,password
request = HTTPI::Request.new(url)
request.auth.ntlm(user,password)
response = HTTPI.get request
return response.raw_body
end
You would need to try with one request, if that fails, or you get a header back with the information on what type of authorisation to use, then you can use that auth instead.
Several different auth types use the same Authorization header, hence why you can't send different types of auth at the same time.
I am using Ruby on Rails 3 and I am trying to implement APIs to retrieve account information from a web service. That is, I would like to connect to a web service that has the Account class and get information from the show action routed at the URI http://<site_name>/accounts/1.
At this time, in the web service accounts_controller.rb file I have:
class AccountsController < ApplicationController
def show
#account = Account.find(params[:id])
respond_to do |format|
format.html
format.js
format.json { render :json => #account.to_json }
end
end
end
Now I need some advice for connecting to the web service. In the client application, I should have a HTTP GET request, but here is my question: What is "the best" approach to connect to a web service making HTTP requests?
This code in the client application works:
url = URI.parse('http://<site_name>/accounts/1.json')
req = Net::HTTP::Get.new(url.path)
res = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) {|http|
http.request(req)
}
#output = JSON(res.body)["account"]
but, is the above code "the way" to implement APIs?
Is it advisable to use third-party plugins and gems?
Yes, since you're using RESTful routes, they are your basic API. You're also returning structured JSON data easily consumable by an application.
There are other ways to implement a web services API (e.g. SOAP), but this is a good and proper way.
Since it's a web services API, connecting to the correct URL and parsing the response is the way to go on the client side. Though if you need to access many different resources it might be a good idea to create a flexible way of building the request URL.
If you don't need low-level tweak-ability offered by Net::HTTP, instead take a look at using Open-URI, which comes with Ruby. It makes it easy to request a page and receive the body back. Open-URI doesn't have all the bells and whistles but for a lot of what I do it's plenty good.
A simple use looks like:
require 'open-uri'
body = open('http://www.example.com').read
The docs have many other examples.
These are other HTTP clients I like:
HTTPClient
Typhoeus
They are more tweakable and can handle multiple connections at once if that's what you need. For instance, Typhoeus has a suite of simplified calls, similar to Open-URI's. From the docs:
response = Typhoeus::Request.get("http://www.pauldix.net")
response = Typhoeus::Request.head("http://www.pauldix.net")
response = Typhoeus::Request.put("http://localhost:3000/posts/1", :body => "whoo, a body")
response = Typhoeus::Request.post("http://localhost:3000/posts", :params => {:title => "test post", :content => "this is my test"})
response = Typhoeus::Request.delete("http://localhost:3000/posts/1")
HTTPClient has similar shortened methods too.
I'd recommend using Rails' ActiveResource for most cases. Failing that, httparty.
I would use ActiveResource if you just need a simple way to pull in rest-based resources. It's already included in rails and pretty trivial to set up. You just specify a base url and resource name in your ActiveResource subclass and then you can CRUD rest-based resources with an interface similar to that of ActiveRecord.
rest-client is the most popular gem for easily connecting to RESTful web services
I think one of the best solutions out there is the Her gem. It encapsulates restful requests providing objects with active-record like behavior.