Weasel Diesel Sinatra

Weasel Diesel Sinatra app gem, allowing you to generate/update sinatra apps using the Weasel-Diesel DSL.

Installation

$ gem install 'wd_sinatra'

Usage

App generation

Once the gem is installed, you can use the generator to create a new app. Go to the location where you want to generate a new app and type the following command (replace <app_name> by the name you want to application to have):

$ wd_sinatra <app_name>

Check the newly generated app

$ cd <app_name>

You'll need bundler to install the dependencies:

$ gem install bundler
$ bundle install

Starting the server

The app is now ready to use, to start it you can use rack:

$ bundle exec rackup

This will start the server on port 9292 and the default GET /hello_world service will be available at: `http://localhost:9292/hello_world'.

Note that the code won't be reloading automatically in the server when you make a modification to the source code. For that, we include rerun, which is only enabled in the development and test environments. Use it like this:

$ bundle exec rerun -- rackup

Generating a new service

You need to have thor and active support installed for that, you might want to add it to your gemfile.

$ thor :service get /foo/bar foo_bar.rb

This command will create a service and a failing test for it.

Console

$ bundle exec bin/console

The console mode is like the server mode but without the server only concerns such as the sinatra routes config and Rack middleware.

If your users also want script/console, add the file, chmod +x it and use the following code:

#!/bin/bash
# Run bin/console for those who like the old Rails way.
abspath=$(cd ${0%/*} && echo $PWD/${0##*/})
$abspath/../../bin/console

ORM

By default the generated app doesn't come with any ORMs, but if you want to use ActiveRecord, you can use these gems:

• wd_sinatra_active_record
• wd_sinatra_sequel

Documentation generation

    $ thor generate_doc <DESTINATION PATH>

To generate documentation for the APIs you created in the api folder. The destination is optional, 'doc' is the default.

Testing

Helpers to test your apps are provided. When you generate your first app, you will see a first example using minitest:

class HelloWorldIntegrationTest < MiniTest::Unit::TestCase

  def test_default_response
    TestApi.get "/hello_world"
    assert_api_response
    assert_equal "Hello World", TestApi.json_response['message']
    assert Time.parse(TestApi.json_response['at']) < Time.now
  end

  def test_customized_response
    TestApi.get "/hello_world", :name => "Matt"
    assert_api_response
    assert_equal "Hello Matt", TestApi.json_response['message']
    assert Time.parse(TestApi.json_response['at']) < Time.now
  end

end

The TestApi module is used to call a service. The call will go through the entire app stack including middleware. You can then look at the response object via the TestApi module using one of the many provided methods such as last_response, json_response and then methods on last_response provided by Rack:

• status
• headers
• body
• errors

The TestApi interface allows you to dispatch all the calls, and to send custom parameters and headers, set cookies and everything you need to do proper integration tests.

Because we opted to describe our responses, and this framework is based on the concept that we want to communicate about our apis, it is critical to test the service responses. For that, a JSON response helper is provided (testunit/minitest only for now) so you can easily check that the structure of the response matches the description.

This is what the assert_api_response helper does.

This helper is to be used after you dispatched an API call. The last response is being analyzed and the JSON structure should match the description provided in the service. Note that this helper doesn't check the content of the structure, that is something you need to do yourself with custom tests as shown in the example.

Tips

When dispatching a test api call using an url with a placeholder such as `/people/:id', you need to pass the id as a param and the url will be properly composed:

TestApi.post '/people/:id', :id => 123

Writing a service

TODO see Weasel Diesel for now and the generated service example.

Config and hooks

app.rb

The lib/app.rb file is being required after the environment is set but before the models are loaded. This is the perfect place to load custom libraries and set your datastore.

This is where you will for instance load ActiveRecord and set your DB connection.

Environments

The files in config/environments can be used to set environment specific configuration or other. If you add a new environment such as staging, you can add a staging.rb file in the environments folder that will only get required when running in this env mode. Whatever the environment is, the config/environments/default.rb is being required before the specific env file.

Hooks

The request dispatcher offers a fews hooks which you can see demonstrated in config/hooks.rb.

• params_preprocessor_hook(params)
• params_postprocessor_hook(params)
• params_exception_handler(exception)
• pre_dispatch_hook

The two first hooks are used to process the params and when implemented are expected to return the params that will be used in the request.

The params_exception_handler hook allows you to overwrite the default exception handling happening when an exception is raised while handling the params (pre procssing, validation or post processing).

The pre_dispatch_hook is called just before the request is dispatched to the service implementation. This is where you might want to implement an authentication verification system for instance.

The post_dispatch_hook is called, as you might have guessed it, after the response is dispatched but before it gets sent back to the client.

These hooks have access to the entire request context, including the service being called. You can use the service extra option to set some custom settings that can then be used in this pre dispatch hook.

In the default generated application, rack-parser is used to parse the body of json requests. By default, this uses the JSON to parse the body. This can be overwritten if you choose.

Say you want to use Oj instead. To do that, edit the config/sinatra_config.rb file and change the following:

  use Rack::Parser

to:

  use Rack::Parser, :parsers => {
    'application/json' => proc { |body| Oj.dump body }
  }

Of course, you'll need to require 'oj' first and add it to your Gemfile if use Bundler.

Update

To update your app, just update your gem dependency on wd_sinatra, you can also compare the difference between your app and a freshly generated app by trying to generate a new app named the same as your old app. The generator will detect conflicts and let you pick an action (diff, overwrite, ignore...)

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request