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content/elsewhere/curl-and-your-rails-2-app/index.md
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@@ -2,7 +2,6 @@
title: "cURL and Your Rails 2 App"
date: 2008-03-28T00:00:00+00:00
draft: false
needs_review: true
canonical_url: https://www.viget.com/articles/curl-and-your-rails-2-app/
---
@@ -12,28 +11,76 @@ files from the web, or to move a TAR file from one remote server to
another. It might come as a surprise, then, that cURL is a full-featured
HTTP client, which makes it perfect for interacting with RESTful web
services like the ones encouraged by Rails 2. To illustrate, let's
create a small Rails app called 'tv_show':
create a small Rails app called `tv_show`:
rails tv_show cd tv_show script/generate scaffold character name:string action:string rake db:migrate script/server
```sh
rails tv_show
cd tv_show
script/generate scaffold character name:string action:string
rake db:migrate
script/server
```
Fire up your web browser and create a few characters. Once you've done
that, open a new terminal window and try the following:
curl http://localhost:3000/characters.xml
```
curl http://localhost:3000/characters.xml
```
You'll get a nice XML representation of your characters:
<?xml version"1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <characters type="array"> <character> <id type="integer">1</id> <name>George Sr.</name> <action>goes to jail</action> <created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</created-at> <updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</updated-at> </character> <character> <id type="integer">2</id> <name>Gob</name> <action>rides a Segway</action> <created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:07-04:00</created-at> <updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:12-04:00</updated-at> </character> <character> <id type="integer">3</id> <name>Tobias</name> <action>wears cutoffs</action> <created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:20-04:00</created-at> <updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:20-04:00</updated-at> </character> </characters>
```xml
<?xml version"1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<characters type="array">
<character>
<id type="integer">1</id>
<name>George Sr.</name>
<action>goes to jail</action>
<created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</created-at>
<updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</updated-at>
</character>
<character>
<id type="integer">2</id>
<name>Gob</name>
<action>rides a Segway</action>
<created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:07-04:00</created-at>
<updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:12-04:00</updated-at>
</character>
<character>
<id type="integer">3</id>
<name>Tobias</name>
<action>wears cutoffs</action>
<created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:20-04:00</created-at>
<updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:02:20-04:00</updated-at>
</character>
</characters>
```
You can retrieve the representation of a specific character by
specifying his ID in the URL:
dce@roflcopter ~ > curl http://localhost:3000/characters/1.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <character> <id type="integer">1</id> <name>George Sr.</name> <action>goes to jail</action> <created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</created-at> <updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</updated-at> </character>
```sh
curl http://localhost:3000/characters/1.xml
```
```xml
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<character>
<id type="integer">1</id>
<name>George Sr.</name>
<action>goes to jail</action>
<created-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</created-at>
<updated-at type="datetime">2008-03-28T11:01:57-04:00</updated-at>
</character>
```
To create a new character, issue a POST request, use the -X flag to
specify the action, and the -d flag to define the request body:
curl -X POST -d "character[name]=Lindsay&character[action]=does+nothing" http://localhost:3000/characters.xml
```sh
curl -X POST -d "character[name]=Lindsay&character[action]=does+nothing" http://localhost:3000/characters.xml
```
Here's where things get interesting: unlike most web browsers, which
only support GET and POST, cURL supports the complete set of HTTP
@@ -41,11 +88,15 @@ actions. If we want to update one of our existing characters, we can
issue a PUT request to the URL of that character's representation, like
so:
curl -X PUT -d "character[action]=works+at+clothing+store" http://localhost:3000/characters/4.xml
```sh
curl -X PUT -d "character[action]=works+at+clothing+store" http://localhost:3000/characters/4.xml
```
If we want to delete a character, issue a DELETE request:
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:3000/characters/1.xml
```sh
curl -X DELETE http://localhost:3000/characters/1.xml
```
For some more sophisticated uses of REST and Rails, check out
[rest-client](https://rest-client.heroku.com/rdoc/) and