README

Path: vendor/rails/actionwebservice/README
Last Update: Fri Mar 10 04:58:47 GMT 2006

Action Web Service — Serving APIs on

rails
Action Web Service provides a way to publish interoperable web service APIs with
Rails without spending a lot of time delving into protocol details.

Features
SOAP RPC protocol support
Dynamic WSDL generation for APIs
XML-RPC protocol support
Clients that use the same API definitions as the server for easy
interoperability with other Action Web Service based applications
Type signature hints to improve interoperability with static languages
Active Record model class support in signatures

Defining your APIs

You specify the methods you want to make available as API methods in an
ActionWebService::API::Base derivative, and then specify this API definition class
wherever you want to use that API.

The implementation of the methods is done separately from the API specification.

Method name inflection

Action Web Service will camelcase the method names according to Rails Inflector
rules for the API visible to public callers. What this means, for example, is that the
method names in generated WSDL will be camelcased, and callers will have to
supply the camelcased name in their requests for the request to succeed.

If you do not desire this behaviour, you can turn it off with the
ActionWebService::API::Base inflect_names option.

Inflection examples

:add => Add

:find_all => FindAll

Disabling inflection

class PersonAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

inflect_names false
end

API definition example

class PersonAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

api_method :add, :expects => [:string, :string, :bool], :returns => [:int]
api_method :remove, :expects => [:int], :returns => [:bool]
end

API usage example

class PersonController < ActionController::Base

web_service_api PersonAPI

def add
 end

def remove
end
end

Publishing your APIs

Action Web Service uses Action Pack to process protocol requests. There are two
modes of dispatching protocol requests, Direct, and Delegated.

Direct dispatching
This is the default mode. In this mode, public controller instance methods
implement the API methods, and parameters are passed through to the methods in
accordance with the API specification.

The return value of the method is sent back as the return value to the caller.

In this mode, a special api action is generated in the target controller to unwrap the
protocol request, forward it on to the relevant method and send back the wrapped
return value. This action must not be overridden.

Direct dispatching example

class PersonController < ApplicationController

web_service_api PersonAPI

def add
end

def remove
end
end

class PersonAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

...
end

For this example, protocol requests for Add and Remove methods sent to
/person/api will be routed to the controller methods add and remove.

Delegated dispatching
This mode can be turned on by setting the web_service_dispatching_mode option
in a controller to :delegated.

In this mode, the controller contains one or more web service objects (objects that
implement an ActionWebService::API::Base definition). These web service objects
are each mapped onto one controller action only.

Delegated dispatching example

class ApiController < ApplicationController

web_service_dispatching_mode :delegated

web_service :person, PersonService.new

end

class PersonService < ActionWebService::Base

web_service_api PersonAPI

def add
end

def remove
end
end

class PersonAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

...
end

For this example, all protocol requests for PersonService are sent to the
/api/person action.

The /api/person action is generated when the web_service method is called. This
action must not be overridden.

Other controller actions (actions that aren’t the target of a web_service call) are
ignored for ActionWebService purposes, and can do normal action tasks.

Layered dispatching
This mode can be turned on by setting the web_service_dispatching_mode option
in a controller to :layered.

This mode is similar to delegated mode, in that multiple web service objects can be
attached to one controller, however, all protocol requests are sent to a single
endpoint.

Use this mode when you want to share code between XML-RPC and SOAP clients,
for APIs where the XML-RPC method names have prefixes. An example of such a
method name would be blogger.newPost.

Layered dispatching example

class ApiController < ApplicationController

web_service_dispatching_mode :layered

web_service :mt, MovableTypeService.new

web_service :blogger, BloggerService.new
web_service :metaWeblog, MetaWeblogService.new
end

class MovableTypeService < ActionWebService::Base

...
end

class BloggerService < ActionWebService::Base

...
end

class MetaWeblogService < ActionWebService::API::Base

...
end

For this example, an XML-RPC call for a method with a name like
mt.getCategories will be sent to the getCategories method on the :mt service.

Customizing WSDL generation

You can customize the names used for the SOAP bindings in the generated WSDL
by using the wsdl_service_name option in a controller:

class WsController < ApplicationController

wsdl_service_name 'MyApp'
end

You can also customize the namespace used in the generated WSDL for custom
types and message definition types:

class WsController < ApplicationController

wsdl_namespace 'http://my.company.com/app/wsapi'
end

The default namespace used is ‘urn:ActionWebService’, if you don’t supply one.

ActionWebService and UTF-8

If you’re going to be sending back strings containing non-ASCII UTF-8 characters
using the :string data type, you need to make sure that Ruby is using UTF-8 as the
default encoding for its strings.

The default in Ruby is to use US-ASCII encoding for strings, which causes a string
validation check in the Ruby SOAP library to fail and your string to be sent back as
a Base-64 value, which may confuse clients that expected strings because of the
WSDL.

Two ways of setting the default string encoding are:

Start Ruby using the -Ku command-line option to the Ruby executable
Set the $KCODE flag in config/environment.rb to the string ‘UTF8‘

Testing your APIs

Functional testing
You can perform testing of your APIs by creating a functional test for the controller
dispatching the API, and calling invoke in the test case to perform the invocation.

Example:
class PersonApiControllerTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
def setup
@controller = PersonController.new
@request = ActionController::TestRequest.new
@response = ActionController::TestResponse.new
end

def test_add
result = invoke :remove, 1
assert_equal true, result
end
end

This example invokes the API method test, defined on the PersonController, and
returns the result.

Scaffolding
You can also test your APIs with a web browser by attaching scaffolding to the
controller.

Example:
class PersonController
web_service_scaffold :invocation
end

This creates an action named invocation on the PersonController.

Navigating to this action lets you select the method to invoke, supply the
parameters, and view the result of the invocation.

Using the client support

Action Web Service includes client classes that can use the same API definition as
the server. The advantage of this approach is that your client will have the same
support for Active Record and structured types as the server, and can just use them
directly, and rely on the marshaling to Do The Right Thing.

Note: The client support is intended for communication between Ruby on Rails
applications that both use Action Web Service. It may work with other servers, but
that is not its intended use, and interoperability can’t be guaranteed, especially not
for .NET web services.

Web services protocol specifications are complex, and Action Web Service client
support can only be guaranteed to work with a subset.

Factory created client example

class BlogManagerController < ApplicationController

web_client_api :blogger, :xmlrpc, 'http://url/to/blog/api/RPC2', :handler_name => 'blogger'
end

class SearchingController < ApplicationController

web_client_api :google, :soap, 'http://url/to/blog/api/beta', :service_name => 'GoogleSearch'
end
See ActionWebService::API::ActionController::ClassMethods for more details.

Manually created client example

class PersonAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

api_method :find_all, :returns => [[Person]]
end

soap_client = ActionWebService::Client::Soap.new(PersonAPI, "http://...")

persons = soap_client.find_all

class BloggerAPI < ActionWebService::API::Base

inflect_names false
api_method :getRecentPosts, :returns => [[Blog::Post]]
end

blog = ActionWebService::Client::XmlRpc.new(BloggerAPI, "http://.../xmlrpc", :handler_name => "blogger")

posts = blog.getRecentPosts

See ActionWebService::Client::Soap and ActionWebService::Client::XmlRpc for

more details.

Dependencies
Action Web Service requires that the Action Pack and Active Record are either
available to be required immediately or are accessible as GEMs.

It also requires a version of Ruby that includes SOAP support in the standard
library. At least version 1.8.2 final (2004-12-25) of Ruby is recommended; this is
the version tested against.

Download
The latest Action Web Service version can be downloaded from
rubyforge.org/projects/actionservice

Installation
You can install Action Web Service with the following command.

% [sudo] ruby setup.rb

License
Action Web Service is released under the MIT license.

Support
The Ruby on Rails mailing list

Or, to contact the author, send mail to bitserf@gmail.com

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