How to create a REST API for a Ruby application?

Question

I would like to know how to provide a Ruby application with a REST API. I could code something based on Ruby's TCPServer API, but that seems a bit low-level. Do you think it would be a good solution? Or do you recommend a better approach?

Answer 1

Use some framework based on Rack, such as Ramaze or Sinatra.

Answer 2

You can use Sinatra to write tiny, focused web applications and lightweight REST services very quickly.

In the documentation section they highlight a couple of videos on that matter:

• Adam Wiggins and Blake Mizerany present Sinatra and RestClient at RubyConf 2008. The talk details Sinatra’s underlying philosophy and reflects on using Sinatra to build real world applications.

• Adam Keys and The Pragmatic Programmers have started a series of screencasts on Sinatra. The first two episodes cover creating a tiny web app and creating a REST service. $5 a pop.

You can also use rails as well, but that's a little overkill...

Answer 3

I'm using Sinatra too to develop simple REST solutions.

The thing is Sinatra is so flexible in many ways. You can build your project structure the way you like more. Usualy we have a lib/ tmp/ and public/ directories and a config.ru and app.rb files but as I sayd you can build whatever you want.

To remember is that Sinatra is not an usual MVC just because de M (model). For you to use sinatra for Simple CRUD web applications you need simply to load a gem.

require 'datamapper'

or other of your choice like sqlite, sequel, ActiveRecord, ...

and voilá you got a ORM under your Sinatra.

Under Sinatra you define routes that obey to four main proposes GET, PUT POST and DELETE.

require 'rubygems'
require 'sinatra'

get '/' do
  erb :home
end

get '/API/*' do
  api = params[:splat]
  @command_test = api[0]
  @command_helo = api[1]
  #...
  def do_things(with_it)
    #...
  end
  #...
end

__END__

@@home

helo

well you got the ideia :)

Finally. Learning Sinatra is not a waste of time because of it simplicity and because it gives (me) foundations of what web programming is. I think In a near future it will be possible to "inject" Sinatra apps (Rack Apps) into a Rails3 project.

Take a look into github, there you will find many project built with Sinatra. For further reading checkout Sinatra::Base.

Bye and have fun.
Francisco