My Google fu is failing me today ;(

I am thinking of writing an 'Active Record like' interface to a public  
API (Digital NZ in this case). What's the best way to go about it?

Should I write an adapter?
Should I monkey patch the find methods on Active Record?
Should I avoid Active Record entirely?
Or is there an easier way?

TIA

Henry

Henry,

I recommend using httparty. Works like a charm for apis.

http://railstips.org/2008/7/29/it-s-an-httparty-and-everyone-is-invited
http://github.com/jnunemaker/httparty/tree/master

You just include it in your model. Here's a post I did on using it,
but you'll find jnunemaker's info more well written:
http://scottmotte.com/archives/218.html

On Jun 30, 11:52 pm, Henry Maddocks <henry.maddo...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 1/07/2009, at 12:03 PM, scottmotte wrote:

That's a bit lower level than I was thinking. I've already got the  
http stuff working.

What I'm after is the recommended way to provide the active record  
style interface, eg

find_by_blah :order => 'foo', :limit => 'lots and lots'

I'm not certain, but I'm pretty sure that means you'd have to go
through the process of creating helpers, packaging them up as a gem -
basically building your own object relational mapper. Not sure what
you're building, but my 2 cents would say that's a lot of work :). My
understanding is that basically activerecord is just a big thing of
syntactic sugar that maps to the low level sql. I'm no expert though.
I've never built an orm or even helped with one so maybe someone else
can chime in.

On Jun 30, 5:30 pm, Henry Maddocks <henry.maddo...@gmail.com> wrote:

Maybe something like activeresource?

http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveResource/Base.html

On 1/07/2009, at 1:22 PM, Tim Uckun wrote:

Something like it yes. The problem with activeresource is it's only  
useful if you're connecting to another rails app.

Might have a poke around in the code. See what pops up.

MongoMapper has some similar goals like being ActiveRecord-like, although
obviously aimed at MongoDB.
http://railstips.org/2009/6/27/mongomapper-the-rad-mongo-wrapper

I mention it for a place to get example code rather than something that will
do what you want.

It's from the previously mentioned and much admired John Nunkemaker,
too.  I would imagine it would have some fresher ideas than
ActiveResource as is it a brandnew piece of code.

All this might be for not.  Judging by your post to DigitalNZ list, you've
already done the work.

Cheers,
Walter

On Wed, Jul 1, 2009 at 2:42 PM, Henry Maddocks <henry.maddo...@gmail.com>wrote:

On 6/07/2009, at 6:52 PM, Walter McGinnis wrote:

Thanks, I'll take a look.

I've just done the basics. I'm leaving the fancy pants stuff for  
another day.

Henry