Real World Fun with
ActiveResource
Rob Caporetto

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

The Is & Is Nots of
ActiveResource

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

What ActiveResource is Not
ActiveRecord for Web Services

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

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

Real World
ActiveResource

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

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

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

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

A Demo...

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

Test Code

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

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