fmrest-ruby

A Ruby client for FileMaker 17's Data API using Faraday and with optional Spyke support (ActiveRecord-ish models).

FileMaker 16's Data API is not supported (but you shouldn't be using it anyway).

If you're looking for a Ruby client for the legacy XML/Custom Web Publishing API try the fabulous ginjo-rfm gem instead.

fmrest-ruby does not currently implement the full spec of FileMaker Data API.

Installation

Add this line to your Gemfile:

gem 'fmrest'

Basic usage

To get a Faraday connection that can handle FM's Data API auth workflow:

connection = FmRest::V1.build_connection(
  host:     "example.com",
  database: "database name",
  username: "username",
  password: "password"
)

The returned connection will prefix any non-absolute paths with "/fmi/data/v1/databases/:database/", so you only need to supply the meaningful part of the path.

To send a request to the Data API use Faraday's standard methods, e.g.:

# Get all records
connection.get("layouts/MyFancyLayout/records")

# Create new record
connection.post do |req|
  req.url "layouts/MyFancyLayout/records"

  # You can just pass a hash for the JSON body
  req.body = { ... }
end

For each request fmrest-ruby will first request a session token (using the provided username and password) if it doesn't yet have one in store.

Session token store

By default fmrest-ruby will use a memory-based store for the session tokens. This is generally good enough for development, but not good enough for production, as in-memory tokens aren't shared across threads/processes.

Besides the default memory token store an ActiveRecord-based token store is included with the gem (maybe more to come later).

On Rails apps already using ActiveRecord setting up this token store should be dead simple:

# config/initializers/fmrest.rb
require "fmrest/v1/token_store/active_record"

FmRest.token_store = FmRest::V1::TokenStore::ActiveRecord

No migrations are needed, the token store table will be created automatically when needed, defaulting to the table name "fmrest_session_tokens".

Spyke support

Spyke is an ActiveRecord-like gem for building REST models. fmrest-ruby has Spyke support out of the box, although Spyke itself is not a dependency of fmrest-ruby, so you'll need to add it to your Gemfile yourself:

gem 'spyke'

Then require fmrest-ruby's Spyke support:

# Put this in config/initializers/fmrest.rb if it's a Rails project
require "fmrest/spyke"

And finally extend your Spyke models with FmRest::Spyke:

class Kitty < Spyke::Base
  include FmRest::Spyke
end

This will make your Spyke model send all its requests in Data API format, with token session auth. Find, create, update and destroy actions should all work as expected.

Alternatively you can inherit directly from the shorthand FmRest::Spyke::Base, which is in itself a subclass of Spyke::Base with FmRest::Spyke already included:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
end

In this case you can pass the fmrest_config hash as an argument to Base():

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base(host: "...", database: "...", username: "...", password: "...")
end

Kitty.fmrest_config # => { host: "...", database: "...", username: "...", password: "..." }

All of Spyke's basic ORM operations work:

kitty = Kitty.new

kitty.name = "Felix"

kitty.save # POST request

kitty.name = "Tom"

kitty.save # PATCH request

kitty.reload # GET request

kitty.destroy # DELETE request

kitty = Kitty.find(9) # GET request

Read Spyke's documentation for more information on these basic features.

In addition FmRest::Spyke extends Spyke::Base subclasses with the following features:

Model.fmrest_config=

Usually to tell a Spyke object to use a certain Faraday connection you'd use:

class Kitty < Spyke::Base
  self.connection = Faraday.new(...)
end

fmrest-ruby simplfies the process of setting up your Spyke model with a Faraday connection by allowing you to just set your Data API connection settings:

class Kitty < Spyke::Base
  include FmRest::Spyke

  self.fmrest_config = {
    host:     "example.com",
    database: "database name",
    username: "username",
    password: "password"
  }
end

This will automatically create a proper Faraday connection for those connection settings.

Note that these settings are inheritable, so you could create a base class that does the initial connection setup and then inherit from it in models using that same connection. E.g.:

class KittyBase < Spyke::Base
  include FmRest::Spyke

  self.fmrest_config = {
    host:     "example.com",
    database: "My Database",
    username: "username",
    password: "password"
  }
end

class Kitty < KittyBase
  # This model will use the same connection as KittyBase
end

Model.layout

Use layout to set the :layout part of API URLs, e.g.:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  layout "FluffyKitty" # uri path will be "layouts/FluffyKitty/records(/:id)"
end

This is much preferred over using Spyke's uri to set custom URLs for your Data API models.

Note that you only need to set this if the name of the model and the name of the layout differ, otherwise the default will just work.

Mapped Model.attributes

Spyke allows you to define your model's attributes using attributes, however sometimes FileMaker's field names aren't very Ruby-ORM-friendly, especially since they may sometimes contain spaces and other special characters, so fmrest-ruby extends attributes' functionality to allow you to map Ruby-friendly attribute names to FileMaker field names. E.g.:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  attributes first_name: "First Name", last_name: "Last Name"
end

You can then simply use the pretty attribute names whenever working with your model and they will get mapped to their FileMaker fields:

kitty = Kitty.find(1)

kitty.first_name # => "Mr."
kitty.last_name  # => "Fluffers"

kitty.first_name = "Dr."

kitty.attributes # => { "First Name": "Dr.", "Last Name": "Fluffers" }

Model.has_portal

You can define portal associations on your model as such:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  has_portal :wool_yarns
end

class WoolYarn < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  attributes :color, :thickness
end

In this case fmrest-ruby will expect the portal table name and portal object name to be both "wool_yarns". E.g., the expected portal JSON portion should be look like this:

...
"portalData": {
  "wool_yarns": [
    {
      "wool_yarns::color": "yellow",
      "wool_yarns::thickness": "thick",
    }
  ]
}

If you need to specify different values for them you can do so with portal_key for the portal table name, and attribute_prefix for the portal object name, e.g.:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  has_portal :wool_yarns, portal_key: "Wool Yarn", attribute_prefix: "WoolYarn"
end

The above expects the following portal JSON portion:

...
"portalData": {
  "Wool Yarn": [
    {
      "WoolYarn::color": "yellow",
      "WoolYarn::thickness": "thick",
    }
  ]
}

You can also specify a different class name with the class_name option:

class Kitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  has_portal :wool_yarns, class_name: "FancyWoolYarn"
end

Dirty attributes

fmrest-ruby includes support for ActiveModel's Dirty mixin out of the box, providing methods like:

kitty = Kitty.new

kitty.changed? # => false

kitty.name = "Mr. Fluffers"

kitty.changed? # => true

kitty.name_changed? # => true

fmrest-ruby uses the Dirty functionality to only send changed attributes back to the server on save.

You can read more about ActiveModel's Dirty in Rails Guides.

Query API

Since Spyke is API-agnostic it only provides a wide-purpose .where method for passing arbitrary parameters to the REST backend. fmrest-ruby however is well aware of its backend API, so it extends Spkye models with a bunch of useful querying methods.

class Kitty < Spyke::Base
  include FmRest::Spyke

  attributes name: "CatName", age: "CatAge"

  has_portal :toys, portal_key: "CatToys"
end

.limit sets the limit for get and find request:

Kitty.limit(10)

.offset sets the offset for get and find requests:

Kitty.offset(10)

.sort (or .order) sets sorting options for get and find requests:

Kitty.sort(:name, :age)
Kitty.order(:name, :age) # alias method

You can set descending sort order by appending either ! or __desc to a sort attribute (defaults to ascending order):

Kitty.sort(:name, :age!)
Kitty.sort(:name, :age__desc)

.portal (or .includes) sets the portals to fetch for get and find requests (this recognizes portals defined with has_portal):

Kitty.portal(:toys)
Kitty.includes(:toys) # alias method

.query sets query conditions for a find request (and supports attributes as defined with attributes):

Kitty.query(name: "Mr. Fluffers")
# JSON -> {"query": [{"CatName": "Mr. Fluffers"}]}

Passing multiple attributes to .query will group them in the same JSON object:

Kitty.query(name: "Mr. Fluffers", age: 4)
# JSON -> {"query": [{"CatName": "Foo", "CatAge": 4}]}

Calling .query multiple times or passing it multiple hashes creates separate JSON objects (so you can define OR queries):

Kitty.query(name: "Mr. Fluffers").query(name: "Coronel Chai Latte")
Kitty.query({ name: "Mr. Fluffers" }, { name: "Coronel Chai Latte" })
# JSON -> {"query": [{"CatName": "Mr. Fluffers"}, {"CatName": "Coronel Chai Latte"}]}

.omit works like .query but excludes matches:

Kitty.omit(name: "Captain Whiskers")
# JSON -> {"query": [{"CatName": "Captain Whiskers", "omit": "true"}]}

You can get the same effect by passing omit: true to .query:

Kitty.query(name: "Captain Whiskers", omit: true)
# JSON -> {"query": [{"CatName": "Captain Whiskers", "omit": "true"}]}

You can chain all query methods together:

Kitty.limit(10).offset(20).sort(:name, :age!).portal(:toys).query(name: "Mr. Fluffers")

You can also set default values for limit and sort on the class:

Kitty.default_limit = 1000
Kitty.default_sort = [:name, :age!]

Calling any Enumerable method on the resulting scope object will trigger a server request, so you can treat the scope as a collection:

Kitty.limit(10).sort(:name).each { |kitty| ... }

If you want to explicitly run the request instead you can use .find_some on the scope object:

Kitty.limit(10).sort(:name).find_some # => [<Kitty...>, ...]

If you want just a single result you can use .find_one instead (this will force .limit(1)):

Kitty.query(name: "Mr. Fluffers").find_one # => <Kitty...>

NOTE: If you know the id of the record you should use .find(id) instead of .query(id: id).find_one (so that the request is sent as GET ../:layout/records/:id instead of POST ../:layout/_find).

Kitty.find(89) # => <Kitty...>

Logging

If using fmrest-ruby + Spyke in a Rails app pretty log output will be set up for you automatically by Spyke (see their README).

You can also enable simple STDOUT logging (useful for debugging) by passing log: true in the options hash for either FmRest.config= or your models' fmrest_config=, e.g.:

FmRest.config = {
  host:     "example.com",
  database: "My Database",
  username: "z3r0c00l",
  password: "abc123",
  log:      true
}

# Or in your model
class LoggyKitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  self.fmrest_config = {
    host:     "example.com",
    database: "My Database",
    username: "z3r0c00l",
    password: "abc123",
    log:      true
  }
end

Note that the log option set in FmRest.config is ignored by models.

If you need to set up more complex logging for your models can use the faraday block inside your class to inject your own logger middleware into the Faraday connection, e.g.:

class LoggyKitty < FmRest::Spyke::Base
  faraday do |conn|
    conn.response :logger, MyApp.logger, bodies: true
  end
end

TODO

• Better/simpler-to-use core Ruby API
• Better API documentation and README
• Oauth support
• Support for portal limit and offset
• More options for token storage
• Support for container fields
• Optional logging
• FmRest::Spyke::Base class for single inheritance (as alternative for mixin)
• Specs
• Support for portal data

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment (it will auto-load all fixtures in spec/fixtures).

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License. See LICENSE.txt.

Disclaimer

This project is not sponsored by or otherwise affiliated with FileMaker, Inc, an Apple subsidiary. FileMaker is a trademark of FileMaker, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the fmrest-ruby project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.