Presentation I presented at the Melbourne Ruby User Group on Sep. 25 2008 on using ActiveResource in a Ruby on Rails application

1. Real World Fun with
ActiveResource
Rob Caporetto

2. Topics
ActiveResource: A brief overview
Limitations
ActiveResource architecture & usage
Demo Time
Testing

3. The Is & Is Nots of
ActiveResource

4. What ActiveResource Is
An ORM for RESTful* Web Services
Provides an ActiveRecord like way of accessing
resources

5. What ActiveResource is Not
ActiveRecord for Web Services

6. Limitations
No ActiveRecord Style Validations
Use hyperactiveresource or write your own
Values Not Always Present
hyperactiveresource allows these to be defined
Ensure attributes are included on the server end

7. More Limitations
Deserialisation Performance
Look at faster_from_xml plugin
Class Level connections
Giles Bowkett’s Dapper Resource

8. Real World
ActiveResource

9. The Server
Rails Application with exposes Resources
Uses ActiveRecord to talk to the DB
Needs to support .xml format for resources
Can support HTTP Basic Authentication if required

10. The Client
Normal Rails Application*
Models use ActiveResource::Base

11. Model Code
class Person < ActiveResource::Base
self.site = quot;http://api.people.com:3000/quot;
self.username = “api”
self.password = “api”
end

12. Doing Calls
person = Person.find(1)
person.first_name = “John”
person.last_name = “Smith”
person.save
other_person = Person.new
other_person.first_name = “Bill”
other_person.last_name = “Jones”
other_person.save

13. A Demo...

14. Testing
ActiveResource uses HttpMock in its Test Suite
Uses stubbed HTTP requests
Returns instantiated ActiveResource models

15. Test Code

16. Links
HyperactiveResource
github.com/lukegalea/hyperactiveresource/
faster_from_xml
http://fasterfromxml.rubyforge.org/
Dapper Resource
http://rubyforge.org/projects/dapper-resource/

17. More Links
More on using http_mock in tests
seangeo.blogspot.com/2007/09/testing-
activeresource.html
giantrobots.thoughtbot.com/2007/2/2/
activeresource-and-testing