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adding shortcut: find(x) = find(:one, :from => x) when x is a url #7

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5 participants

Seth Faxon Jeremy Kemper Markus Schwed Arun Agrawal Guillermo Iguaran
Seth Faxon

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Seth Faxon

I would really appreciate any feedback on this. This is a very early part of an idea to decouple URL generation from ActiveResource. It seems more 'RESTful' to store the URL of a resource rather than an arbitrary ID. Eventually I think it would be useful to use a finder like this when dealing with associations as well. For example:

class Post < ActiveResource::Base = "http://localhost:3000"
  has_many :comments

class Comment < ActiveResource::Base
  belongs_to :post

p = Post.find('http://localhost:3000/posts/1')
GET http://localhost:3000/posts/1 delivers:

{ title: "Post Title",
body: "Awesome post.",
comments_url: "http://localhost:3000/posts/1/comments"
comment_count: 1000 }

Calling p.comments could use Comments.find(p.comments_url), rather than being generated by ActiveResource.

A better example is probably pagination. Github uses the Link header for their pagination. It would be great to see ActiveResource eventually support something like this.

class GitHubRepos < ActiveResoure::Base = ""
  self.paginator =

This probably introduces some problems with parsing paginated results and index actions as well, but it would make ActiveResource a lot more useful for my needs.


Jeremy Kemper

I like this direction, too: working with URLs and Link headers. Navigating an API.

Markus Schwed
SweeD commented

I like the idea, too. +1 from me.

Markus Schwed
SweeD commented

Some more feedback or just merge?

/cc @arunagw @guilleiguaran

Arun Agrawal

@SweeD thanks for mention. :+1: from my side.

Jeremy Kemper

The implementation feels bolted on. I think working with URIs natively needs deeper consideration.

Parsing every id as a URI will be surprising in many cases, too: Person.find(params[:id]) is now vulnerable to someone passing as the id param.

Seth Faxon

I agree that it feels bolted on. Currently the find method works the way it did in ActiveRecord, using the first param to find out what sort of search it should be doing. Is there a better way do find overall?

Jeremy Kemper

Checking for a URI instance could work, rather than accepting strings and parsing.

Guillermo Iguaran

I would love

GitHubRepos.find(params[:id], :site => "")
Markus Schwed
SweeD commented


There is already a option for that:

GitHubRepos.find(params[:id], from: "")

Or did you mean especially the site attribute or haven't i got your question at all? :smile:

Markus Schwed
SweeD commented

@jeremy said:


Sounds like a goog idea to me.

What do you guys think?
/cc @guilleiguaran @arunagw

Guillermo Iguaran

@SweeD right, I mean the site :smile:

Jeremy Kemper

@sfaxon thoughts on checking scope.is_a?(URI) instead?

Markus Schwed

@sfaxon What do you think about jeremy's idea?


Showing 1 unique commit by 1 author.

Apr 11, 2012
Seth Faxon sfaxon adding shortcut: find(x) = find(:one, :from => x)
  x can be a full url
3  lib/active_resource/base.rb
@@ -953,8 +953,9 @@ def find_one(options)
953 953 end
954 954 end
955 955
956   - # Find a single resource from the default URL
  956 + # Find a single resource from the default URL, or use the given url
957 957 def find_single(scope, options)
  958 + return find_one(options.merge(:from => scope)) if URI.parse(scope.to_s).scheme
958 959 prefix_options, query_options = split_options(options[:params])
959 960 path = element_path(scope, prefix_options, query_options)
960 961 instantiate_record(format.decode(connection.get(path, headers).body), prefix_options)
1  test/abstract_unit.rb
@@ -100,6 +100,7 @@ def setup_response
100 100
101 101 ActiveResource::HttpMock.respond_to do |mock|
102 102 mock.get "/people/1.json", {}, @matz
  103 + mock.get "http://37s.sunrise.i:3000/people/1", {}, @matz
103 104 mock.get "/people/1.xml", {}, @matz_xml
104 105 mock.get "/people/2.xml", {}, @david
105 106 mock.get "/people/5.xml", {}, @marty
6 test/cases/finder_test.rb
@@ -17,6 +17,12 @@ def test_find_by_id
17 17 assert_equal "Matz",
18 18 assert
19 19 end
  20 +
  21 + def test_find_by_url
  22 + matz = Person.find("#{}people/1")
  23 + assert_kind_of Person, matz
  24 + assert_equal "Matz",
  25 + end
20 26
21 27 def test_find_by_id_with_custom_prefix
22 28 addy = StreetAddress.find(1, :params => { :person_id => 1 })


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