Problem w/ActionWebService and Inheritance in Service Params

rubyonrails-talk
1

I have a service method that takes a PaymentMethod which can either be a CreditCard or a PayPal account. When I request the service and pass one or the other it always comes over as a PaymentMethod; the service doesn't seem to know that the parameter is really a CreditCard or PayPal. Here's some sample code that illustrates what I'm talking about more concretely:

class PaymentsApi < ActionWebService::API::Base api_method(    :create_payment,    :expects => [      { :payment_method => PaymentMethod }    ],    :returns => [ :payment_id => :string ] ) end

class PaymentMethod < ActionWebService::Struct # ... end

class CreditCard < PaymentMethod # ... end

class PayPal < PaymentMethod # ... end

I see in the request XML that it knows that the payment_method is really a CreditCard or Invoice (note the xsi:type).

<env:Envelope xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema&quot; xmlns:env="Error; xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance&quot;&gt;   <env:Body>     <n1:CreatePayment xmlns:n1="urn:ActionWebService" env:encodingStyle="Error;       <payment_method xmlns:n2="http://www.ruby-lang.org/xmlns/ruby/type/custom&quot; xsi:type="n2:CreditCard">         ...       </payment_method>     </n1:CreatePayment>   </env:Body> </env:Envelope>

However, when I attempt to switch in the controller based on the type of the payment_method it doesn't seem to remember that it knows this. Is it not possible to use this type of polymorphism in service parameters or am I doing something wrong?

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance, Jason

2

Jason Fox wrote:

I have a service method that takes a PaymentMethod which can either be a CreditCard or a PayPal account. When I request the service and pass one or the other it always comes over as a PaymentMethod; the service doesn't seem to know that the parameter is really a CreditCard or PayPal.

I tracked down the issue to the cast_to_structured_type method of casting.rb. Essentially, a condition needs to be added that would effectively cause the code to not attempt to "cast" the parameter if it is derived from the type specified in the API declaration. Here's a one-line modification:

  # lib/action_web_service/castings.rb - line 120   obj = value if canonical_type(value.class) == canonical_type(signature_type.type)

And here's how it would read after the patch along with the next unmodified line (121) for reference:

  obj = value if canonical_type(value.class) == canonical_type(signature_type.type) or derived_from?(signature_type.type, value.class)   obj ||= signature_type.type_class.new

I am going to look into submitting a patch. Can anyone think of why this shouldn't work this way? I am also asking the priest who resurrected this code from the dead.

Jason