Luca Guidi

Acts As Resource is ready for the imminent Rails 2.1!

I also moved it to GitHub, the new repo is http://github.com/jodosha/acts-as-resource/tree/master, the SVN one is deprecated.

If you enjoyed this post, feel free to recommend me on Working With Rails.

Acts As Resource is ready for Rails 2.0!!

This plugin combines both ActiveRecord and ActiveResource features in one class. It easily allows to deal with a remote REST service or with a local database.

If you want read more visit the plugin page or install with:

$ ./script/plugin install http://dev.23labs.net/svn/rails/plugins/acts_as_resource

Would you use both ActiveRecord and ActiveResource in one class?
Now with Acts As Resource you can!!

Example

About

You can find many informations about Acts As Resource on related page on my blog.

Vote

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Acts As Resource

ActsAsResource combines ActiveRecord and ActiveResource features in one class.

Example

class Carrot
  acts_as_resource
  self.site = 'http://localhost:3000'
  
  belongs_to :bunny

  validates_presence_of :color
  validates_uniqueness_of :color
  validates_length_of :color, :within => 2..23,
                      :if => lambda { |c| c.color && !c.color.empty? }
  validates_format_of :color,
                      :with => /[\w\s]+$/,
                      :if => lambda { |c| c.color && !c.color.empty? }

  before_create :please_call_me_before_create
  def self.validate
    logger.debug("VALIDATE #{color}")
  end
  
  def please_call_me_before_create
    logger.debug("Ohhh, so you called me..")
  end  
end

Usage

For convention each operation is local unless specified with :remote flag.

carrot = Carrot.find(23)                   # => local request
carrot = Carrot.find(23, :remote => false) # => local request
carrot = Carrot.find(23, :remote => true)  # => remote request

Carrot.create(:color => 'orange')                  # => create local
Carrot.create(:color => 'orange', :remote => true) # => create remote

Prerequisites

For 2.0 railists: no problem guys!
For old 1.2.x people you should live in the edge, cause ActiveResource is needed.

Install

Rails 2.1.x

$ ./script/plugin install git://github.com/jodosha/acts-as-resource.git

Rails <= 2.0.x

$ ./script/plugin install http://dev.23labs.net/svn/rails/plugins/acts_as_resource

Uninstall

$ ./script/plugin remove acts_as_resource

Common Issues

• Actually ActsAsResource doesn't support Single Table Inheritance.
• Sometimes, when class relations are used, ActiveRecord generates a warning like:
  

  warning: toplevel constant Bunny referenced by Carrot::Bunny

Contribute

• Check out the code and test it:

  $ git clone git://github.com/jodosha/acts-as-resource.git
      $ rake resource

• Create a ticket on: http://dev.23labs.net/rails/trac.cgi
• Create a patch and add as attachement to the ticket.
• The SVN repo has been deprecated in favor of the Git one.

Repository

git://github.com/jodosha/acts-as-resource.git

Vote

If you find it useful feel free to add to your favs on agilewebdevelopment.com.

Copyright

Copyright © 2007 Luca Guidi - 23 Labs, released under the MIT license