[Catalyst] Request for comments: model class for REST queries

[Christopher Heschong]

Adam, thanks for the feedback and suggestions!  See below for more  
comments:

On Dec 7, 2006, at 12:28 PM, Adam Jacob wrote:

> On Wed, Dec 06, 2006 at 10:08:08AM -0500, Christopher Heschong wrote:
>> Hi, I've created a simple library to make calls to REST services,  
>> along
>> with an associated Catalyst model, and wanted to get some  
>> feedback.  The
>> class itself is called CRUST and basically it's just some very  
>> simple glue
>> for URI, LWP, XML::Simple (although any other serialization  
>> formatters are
>> supported). GET and POST are supported of course.
>
> My first thought is that you are going to need to support the full  
> range
> of HTTP Methods.  At the very least, you will need: GET, POST, PUT and
> DELETE.  You probably want to support OPTIONS and HEAD as well.


Thanks.  There are ->get and ->post methods already, plus ->request 
($method, ...) for any other method LWP supports if you need those.   
But it's probably a good idea to add them as methods by default.   
Although what would you really expect to get back from OPTIONS?  I'm  
sort of expecting some XML or something back now.

>
>> Here's an example of how I might use it to talk to Yahoo! Answers:
>>
>>   # Create a CRUST model
>>   package MyApp::Model::Amazon;
>>   use base 'Catalyst::Model::CRUST';
>>
>>   __PACKAGE__->config(
>>     base => 'http://answers.yahooapis.com/AnswersService/V1/',
>>     query => { appid => 'YahooDemo' }
>>   );
>
> The query part might be better named "params", since that's what
> Catalyst uses.

Another good point, will fix.

>
>>   # Meanwhile in a controller nearby
>>   $c->stash->{answers} = $c->model('YahooAnswers')->get 
>> ( 'questionSearch',
>>       query => $c->req->param('query')
>>   );
>
> Ew!  Do they really have URLs like questionSearch and getByCategory?
> Very un-RESTful.

(No comment... it's better than Amazon IMHO)

>> Does anyone find this useful?  SVN snapshot is available:
>>   http://svn.screwdriver.net/repos/code/CRUST
>>
>> Should this sort of thing being uploaded to CPAN?  Anyone want to  
>> review
>> the code beforehand?
>
> Something like this is both useful and good.  I'm not certain what the
> best way to implement it is.  I'll try and find some time to look at
> your code soon.
>
> Adam


One thought that crossed my mind was to make methods like:

$c->model('whatever')->get_questionSearch( [params] )
$c->model('whatever')->post_questionSearch( [params] )

or just

$c->model('whatever')->questionSearch( [params] ) #default to GET


instead of what I have now:

$c->model('whatever')->get('questionSearch(params => ...);
$c->model('whatever')->post('questionSearch(params => ...);

A bit of AUTOLOAD should do the trick, but would the above syntax be  
better or worse?
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