A problem with the standard XML Representations

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hey all,

There is one thing that has been bothering me about how Rails implements REST, particularly in the XML form. I'll be the first to admit that I haven't read all of Roy's dissertation but I think I have the gist of it from his presentation "The Rest of REST" (http:// roy.gbiv.com/talks/200709_fielding_rest.pdf)

One of the key things that I get from him is that its URLs that make connections between representations, and its the presence of URLs that allows us to create adaptive behaviour. So now I wonder why it is that if I have a model that belongs to another:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base    belongs_to :bar end

I get something like the following XML from /Foos/1.xml:

<foo>   <id>1</id>   <bar>12</bar> </foo>

As far as I can tell, this is not RESTful, or at least not as RESTful as: <foo>   <id>/Foos/1.xml</id>   <bar>/Bars/12.xml</bar> </foo>

further, if we add a has_many and has_many :through to our model, such as: class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base    belongs_to :bar    has_many :subscriptions    has_many :blogs, :through => :subscriptions end

I would expect to see: <foo>   <id>/Foos/1.xml</id>   <bar>/Bars/12.xml</bar>   <subscriptions>/Foos/1/subscriptions.xml</subscriptions>   <blogs>/Foos/1/blogs.xml</blogs> </foo>

Since Rails doesn't do this natively, how can I abuse it to make it do my will?

2

AdamV wrote: <snip>

further, if we add a has_many and has_many :through to our model, such as: class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base    belongs_to :bar    has_many :subscriptions    has_many :blogs, :through => :subscriptions end

I would expect to see: <foo>   <id>/Foos/1.xml</id>   <bar>/Bars/12.xml</bar>   <subscriptions>/Foos/1/subscriptions.xml</subscriptions>   <blogs>/Foos/1/blogs.xml</blogs> </foo>

<snip> Hi Adam

I am afraid that I can only help you with the second issue (above):

The ActiveRecord.to_xml method takes parameters that allow you to include associated objects, namely:

render :xml => @foo.to_xml( :includes => [ :subscription, :blogs ] )

I have yet to implement this myself (although I will be in the next few days) - but I got the above from the very excellent "The Rails Way" by Obie Fernandez.

The Rails Way has a good section on xml processing, so it may very well have a solution to your first problem as well, but I cannot remember anything offhand. I would also be interested in a solution to the first problem as well.

R