[uf-rest] RESTifying RAILs

[Dr. Ernie Prabhakar]

Hi all,

A big welcome to new member David Hanssonn, who is probably best  
known to you for an obscure little app framework he wrote in Ruby. :-)

I promised him I'd write up my "wishlist" of things I wish Rails did  
"out of the box" to make it easier to create REST-style web services/ 
apps.  I suspect these are all _possible_ in Rails (even easy!), but  
in my dream world they are 'automatic' so that everyone naturally  
does "the right thing."   To be sure, some of these may be  
impractical or bad ideas, but that's why I'm posting them for  
feedback from the list.

http://microformats.org/wiki/rest/rails

Feel free to either edit directly or reply to this email.  Thanks!

-- Ernie P.


= Rails on REST Wish List =
''Draft 1, 11/3/2005''

== REST-style URIs ==

That is, make the default URL style:
	http://host/base/table/id/style
as in:
	http://localhost:3000/mydemo/person/113

for the default view, with an optional "/edit" on the end for, e.g.,  
forms vs. a list.

This is subtly different than the current "table/action/id" which  
scaffolding generates.   The central concept in REST is that every  
object (noun) should have a unique URI, and having an action inlined  
screws that up.

== POST vs. GET ==

Right now, as far as I can tell, Rails doesn't differentiate results  
from a POST vs. results from a GET.  Those are semantically different  
in REST, so I'd like [to know] a way to handle that cleanly.

== XOXO-style templates ==

I'd like the default rhtml templates to be XOXO-compatible (e.g., dt/ 
dd rather than <p><br>).

== Columns as class names ==

In addition to 'human_readable' column names, I'd like there to be a  
parameter for the equivalent 'css-friendly' representation of those  
columns -- and for the default templates to include that.

== Complete, functioning, customizable web application ==

I want to be able to do something like:

	$ script/generate rex modelA modelB

And get a full-blown web application which includes:
* the front page, including navigation links to various model objects.
* search boxes
* entry forms
* AHAH (ajax) responses
* both list- and table- oriented model representations

The ideal is that I could use a combination of CSS and AHAH to  
generate the desired look, feel, and behavior of my website without  
actually having to touch existing HTML.  As a bonus, I also want it  
complete enough that I can write a REST-spider to easily discover all  
the valid URIs and queries.  Hey, a guy can dream...

== XOXO instead of YAML for configuration ==

Okay, this last one is really nit-picky, and a little odd, but it  
would (IMHO) be more consistent. Right now, the config is the only  
non-HTML, non-Ruby file, and I at least had never seen YAML before so  
it looked out of place.  Granted, using XHTML for config files is a  
little freaky at first, but when you think about it, its no worse  
than using custom XML tags (and way more interoperable). I'll even  
write the Ruby serializer myself if I have to...

------------
Ernest N. Prabhakar, Ph.D. <drernie at opendarwin.org>
Ex-Physicist, Marketing Weenie, and Dilettante Hacker
Probe-Hacker blog: http://www.opendarwin.org/~drernie/