Restful Best Practices
âą
8 likesâą4,520 views
These are the slides of our talk at Fosdem 2008 (http://fosdem.org). We explain what REST is, how it is used in Rails, and finally we give some tips on how to architecture your application so that it follows the REST philosophy.
Recommended
More Related Content
What's hot
What's hot (20)
Similar to Restful Best Practices
Similar to Restful Best Practices (20)
Recently uploaded
Recently uploaded (20)
Restful Best Practices
- 1. RESTful best practices Jean-Baptiste Escoyez & Nicolas Jacobeus FOSDEM â08 Ruby on Rails DevRoom 24 February 2008 Frailers.net
- 2. Outline REST REST in Rails REST in Rails: Best practices
- 3. REST
- 4. REST What is REST? How does REST work? Why REST? REST
- 5. What is REST? Itâs about communication between computers Itâs about designing the architecture of your applications REST » What is REST?
- 6. Itâs about communication between computers Web services! SOAP / XML-RPC => communication REST => communication + standardisation REST » What is REST?
- 7. Itâs about architecturing your application îesis by Roy Fielding (2000) âArchitectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architecturesâ REST applies some constraints to the architecture of your application îe interface is the same for humans and computers (by the way: REST means Representational State Transfer... I think)â«â⏠REST » What is REST?
- 8. How does REST work ? Everything is a âresourceâ 4 basic requirements for a RESTful system REST » How does REST work?
- 9. îe concept of resource Resource = thing exposed by the system to the outside world Everything is a resource http://www.frailers.net/users/1 http://www.frailers.net/users/1/memberships Independent from its representation user.html => http://www.frailers.net/users/1 user.jpg => http://www.frailers.net/users/1 REST » How does REST work?
- 10. When is a system RESTful ? Addressability Statelessness Connectivity Uniform interface 4 standardized actions: GET - POST - PUT - DELETE Safety (GET) Idempotence (PUT-DELETE) REST » How does REST work?
- 11. So, why REST ? Standardisation is good Why use so many diïŹerent functions when you always do the same (CRUDâing objects) Why separate the logic for computers and humans ? (segregation is evil) Statelessness => scalability and decoupling REST » Why REST?
- 12. Enough for this theoretical HTTP stuïŹ! îis is a DevRoom about , right ? REST » Why REST?
- 13. REST in Rails (Not on Rails !)
- 14. REST in Rails Addressability: RESTful routes Representation independence: respond_to Nesting resources Developing REST clients ...and some tasty Rails sugars REST in Rails
- 15. Addressability : Routes RESTless RESTful VERB HREF VERB URI POST /users/create POST /users GET /users/1 GET /users/1 POST /users/1/update PUT /users/1 ???? /users/1/delete DELETE /users/1 REST in Rails » Routes
- 16. Addressability : Routes map.resources :users Resource Verb Action /users GET index /users POST create /users/1 GET show /users/1 PUT update /users/1 DELETE destroy REST in Rails » Routes
- 17. RESTful Rails controller A RESTful controller has 7 standard actions Each controller deals with a resource (user) and its collection (list of users) REST in Rails » Routes
- 18. Representation independence: respond_to Based on: HTTP Accept Header Format extension http://www.frailers.net/articles/24/comments/1.html http://www.frailers.net/articles/24/comments/1.js REST in Rails » respond_to
- 19. Making REST clients : ActiveResource class Project < ActiveResource::Base self.site = âhttp://localhost:3000â end projects = Project.find(:all) new_project = Project.new(:name => âMy new projectâ) new_project.save REST in Rails » ActiveResource
- 20. Nested resources http://www.frailers.net/articles/24/comments/1 http://www.frailers.net/articles/24/author ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map| map.resources :articles do |article| article.resources :comments article.resource :author end end REST in Rails » Nested resources
- 21. More rails sugars ScaïŹolding script/generate scaffold article title:string body:text published:boolean Helpers link_to @article form_for @comment do |f| ... end redirect_to @article Authentication RESTful authentication plugin REST in Rails » Sugars
- 22. To sum up... Using REST in Rails is good lightweight controllers API given for free Rails is opinionated implementation of REST is not perfect REST in Rails » Conclusion
- 23. Best practices
- 24. Best practices Design methodology Real-life examples Best Practices
- 25. Disclaimer! Maybe âbestâ is an overstatement (îis sounded great for the call for papers) îere are always diïŹerent solutions Best Practices » Disclaimer
- 26. Design methodology Knowing Railsâ resources API is great, but not suïŹcient îe big question: what resources do I choose ? Best Practices » Design methodology
- 27. Classic beginnerâs mistakes strictly mirroring your ActiveRecord data model to choose your resources thinking all 7 actions should be written for each and every resource and, of course, adding custom methods if the standard ones donât ïŹt Best Practices » Design methodology
- 28. Resources are not models Well, to be fair, then can (and usually) represent models But also: Relations States Events (DHH told me so) Best Practices » Design methodology
- 29. Nouns are the new verbs Change your way of explaining a scenario, an action Use a noun to describe the action îe noun given to your scenario is the resource youâre looking for A user subscribes to a group A subscription is created îe project is validated by its owner A project validation is created îe user deactivates his account A user account activation is deleted Best Practices » Design methodology
- 30. 7 is not a strict target Resources can be read-only Sometimes, actions are meaningless: update an âaccount activationâ ? really ? destroy a âpage viewâ ? why ? Best Practices » Design methodology
- 31. Donât be tempted! Rails allows extra, custom methods to be added to controllers, if you really need them But youâll lose all what you were trying to do in the ïŹrst place (no uniform interface, etc.) I have never needed that (except, maybe...) If you do need that, itâs probable that youâd better rethink your architecture Best Practices » Design methodology
- 32. OK, you want real-life examples Adding/removing members from a group Dealing with object workïŹows Multi-step edition wizard Managing a shopping cart Manipulating several resource in one request Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 33. Adding / Removing members from a group Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 34. Adding / Removing members from a group Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 35. Dealing with object workïŹows Consider a CMS with all sorts of documents Each document has a status: draft, reviewed, published, ... Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 36. Dealing with object workïŹows Or another way : only âupdateâ the document depending on the business logic, this can be considered overloading Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 37. Multi-step edition wizard A complex model needs to be edited in 3 steps, in a precise order Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 38. Multi-step edition wizard All these steps are diïŹerent, partial representations of the same resource Just GET the resource and put the step as a parameter Update the resource at each step... and redirect to the next step representation Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 39. Multi-step edition wizard Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 40. Managing a shopping cart We keep in the database the state of the shopping cart for each user: /users/21/shopping_cart_items Yes, but I donât want the cart to be persistent Delete from the database when the user logs out Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 41. Manipulating two resources simultaneously Youâre not manipulating two resources Youâre manipulating a couple of things îe resource is the couple Create guy, create girl => Create couple Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 42. Manipulating two resources simultaneously If you still need to do it in several steps... CREATE a Transaction resource PUT the ïŹrst part PUT the second part commit (PUT âcommittedâ) or revert (DELETE) Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 43. îere are still some limitations... I want to choose items to delete from a list with checkboxes DELETE only works for a single resource at a time What youâre doing is updating the parent resource If thereâs no parent resource, youâre screwed Best Practices » Real-life examples
- 44. îank you! Itâs lunch time! Letâs eat! Letâs create some LunchEatings ! POST /lunch_eatings