发出API请求，将响应放入RAILS 4.0.0

Question

I have been using ruby to make API calls and operating strictly in the terminal for some time. I am now in the process of learning more about rails and trying to get out of my terminal. How can I, using rails 4.0, put a variable to the screen from an already existing .rb file? I am confused as to where I should write the API request to get the variable- Is it a controller, can I write it directly in a view, etc.

Sample idea:

#test.rb

call= "/api/v2/surveys/"
auth = {:username => "test", :password => "password"}
url = HTTParty.get("https://surveys.com#{call}",
:basic_auth => auth,
:headers => { 'ContentType' => 'application/json' } )
response = JSON.parse(url.body)
survey_ids = response["surveys"].map { |s| s["id"] }
survey_ids.each do |i|
  puts i
end

That is a sample .rb script I already have. The difference is I would like for puts i to happen on a web app when a page is loaded instead of me running the script in my terminal. What would I use in rails to make that happen?

Answer 1

It depends entirely on how your application is going to be set up but here's a basic example:

Say you have a Survey model:

class Survey < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :survey_id
end

You can place your call for a list of surveys (I'm assuming that's what your code does) in the SurveysController:

class SurveysController < ApplicationController

def index
  @surveys = Survey.all
end

def show
  @survey = Survey.find(params[:id])
 end

def pull_surveys
  call= "/api/v2/surveys/"
  auth = {:username => "test", :password => "password"}
  url = HTTParty.get("https://surveys.com#{call}",
        :basic_auth => auth,
        :headers => { 'ContentType' => 'application/json' } )
  response = JSON.parse(url.body)
  survey_ids = response["surveys"].map { |s| s["id"] }
  survey_ids.each do |i|
    Survey.create(survey_id: i)
  end
end

After calling the pull_surveys method, you'll actually have surveys your view can load so in your views for the Survey Model you can use @surveys or @survey (depending on which view you're in) and serve up whatever you want (eg @survey.survey_id in show to show that specific survey's ID).

Note that you'll want to be careful about where you place your API call methods - I placed it in the controller for simplicity's sake but you may not want to do this.

There's lots of useful info in the rails guides to get you started: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/index.html