[PhillyOnRails] April POR Meeting - Please RSVP

[Trotter Cashion]

Randy,

Using REST does not require that all of your controllers are completely
RESTful. Rather, it is a goal that you seek to achieve. It's perfectly fine
to have some of your controllers using only CRUD, while others are only
partially CRUDful or do not follow CRUD at all.

As for your admin question, that's one that I've struggled with in the past
and do not have a really good answer to. One possibility is to use a
different resource (controller) for admin editing, since you're really
requesting a different conceptual entity. In one case, you want the user
that the user sees, in the other case you want the user with admin
attributes.

A good example of a working RESTful app is stikkit.com. Have a look at their
API section and you'll see where they've really put REST to use.

- Trotter

On 3/21/07, Randy Schmidt <x at altorg.com> wrote:
>
> (I know know if this made it on the list from my other email
> address...sorry if it is a dup)
>
> Sorry if this is a little off topic, but has anybody completed an app
> using REST? I for the most part understand the restful architecture
> and how it relates to resources, but I keep going back and forth about
> the best way to architect the rest of an app that isn't CRUD such as
> wrapping parts in an admin interface. I haven't seem much material
> that doesn't do anything besides the obvious when it comes to CRUD and
> resources. On the rails way, they mention one resource that is
> associated with a model and one that is not. And in the peepcode
> screencast, Geoffrey mentions using just another layout for an admin
> interface but he didn't go into specifics about how it would work. It
> seems kind of messy to me. I have also tried looking at Beast forum
> (be careful typing that into google) to see how he architects things
> but I don't think there really is an "admin interface".
>
> One of the examples I think of is a user and an admin should be able
> to edit the user's profile, but the admin should be able to edit more
> than the user (for example to approve them). This would use the
> edit/update methods for each case. Do I embed the permissions in both
> actions and then embed logic in the view that shows more fields if
> they are an admin? If done that way, it seems as though the
> controllers are getting quite heavy. Is this really a push to not have
> an admin interface at all and show edit links in more places if the
> user is an admin? And admin may also want to view data associated with
> the site in a different way than the regular users, where does that
> fit in.
>
> Are we "allowed" to use a hybrid architecture where we use REST for
> all of the resources and then create controllers if need to view the
> info differently?
>
> I think it would be interesting to hear/see how someone has used REST
> for a complete application since using it to manage a model seems to
> be pretty simple and straight-forward.
>
> I'm dying to get this worked out since it is almost painful working on
> apps "the old way" after playing with a RESTful app.
>
> Randy
>
> On 3/21/07, Colin A. Bartlett <phillyonrails at colinabartlett.com> wrote:
> > Eric Snyder Sent: Wednesday, March 21, 2007 2:21 PM
> >
> > > The Restful Rails screencast may be a good one for the meeting.
> >
> > Great idea. I've tried to wrap my head around REST and have been a
> little
> > lost. I'm probably not the only one. (Or maybe I am.)
> >
> > The Ruby puzzlers are fun, too. But REST is more Rails-specific rather
> than
> > Ruby in general.
> >
> > Either way, I'll be there.
> >
> > Colin
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> >
>
>
> --
> Randy Schmidt
> randy at umlatte.com
> www.umlatte.com
> 267.334.6833
> _______________________________________________
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