Rails - Oct 2005 - REST Style Web Service in Rails - Looking for example

Hello,
Can anyone point me to an example of a REST style web service
implemented in Rails? Yes, I have looked at Action Web Service but
that is SOAP/WSDL style which is a bit overkill for my needs.

Thanks,
Doug Turner

On 10/13/05, Douglass Turner
<douglass.turner-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> Hello,
> Can anyone point me to an example of a REST style web service
> implemented in Rails? Yes, I have looked at Action Web Service but
> that is SOAP/WSDL style which is a bit overkill for my needs.
A REST API is exactly what your web browser uses when you browse
websites. There''s really nothing special about it. You can think of
the URL as the function call (with any query-string being the
arguments), and the body of the response is the return value. So if
you were trying to communicate between two machines, you might just
use a template that returns an XML document or some other format that
the client knows how to interpret.

As a simple example, lets say you want to call
"http://www.example.com/math/add_one?input=1". You might have this for
a controller:

class MathController < ApplicationController
  def add_one
    @result = params[ :input ].to_i + 1
  end
end

And you might have a template ''app/views/math/add_one.rhtml'':

<%= @result %>

Alternatively (and prefferably in this simple example) you could skip
the template file altogether:

class MathController < ApplicationController
  def add_one
    render :text => ( params[ :input ].to_i + 1 ).to_s
  end
end

--
Regards,
John Wilger

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Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don''t know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn''t matter."
- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland