Daylight

Daylight extends Rails and ActiveResource to allow your client API to perform akin to ActiveRecord

Features include those like ActiveRecord such as scopes, find_by lookups, calling associations on server-side models, using through associations, and the ability to chain queries. Eases requesting complex queries on your Rails models using remoted methods.

Typical ActiveResource functionality:

  API::Post.all                                      # index request
  API::Post.published                                # client-based association
  API::Post.find(1)                                  # show request

Daylight adds to ActiveResource with chained queries:

  API::Post.where(author_id: 1)                      # simple query
  API::Post.where(author_id: 1).first                # chained query
  API::Post.where(author_id: 1).published            # chained query with scope
  API::Post.where(author_id: 1).published.recent     # chained query with multiple scopes
  API::Post.where(author_id: 1).limit(10).offset(20) # chained query with limit and offset
  API::Post.where(author_id: 1).order(:date)         # chained query with ordering

  API::Post.find_by(slug: '100-best-albums-2014')    # find_by lookup gets first match

Daylight can also chain queries on an ActiveResource's association. All of the chain queries above can be used to refine searches on associations:

  API::Post.first.comments                           # lookup and association
  API::Post.first.comments.where(user_id: 2)         # query on lookup's association
  API::Post.first.comments.where(user_id: 2).first   # chained query on
  API::Post.first.comments.where(user_id: 2).edited  # chained query with scope
                                                     # etc.

Daylight allows you to return collections from complex queries on your model:

  API::Post.first.top_comments

Daylight packages API query details in one request when it can to lower the network overhead.

Daylight allows you to query for a record before initializing or creating it using ActiveRecord's familiar first_or_create and first_or_initialize methods.

  post = API::Post.new(slug: '100-best-albums-2014')
  post.author = API::User.find_or_create(username: 'reidmix')
  post.save

The last query to the database uses Rails' accepts_nested_attributes_for and the User could have easily been setup with find_or_initialize to reduce the number of server-side queries.

More information can be found in the Daylight Users Guide.

Getting Started

1. Install Daylight both on your server and your client.

   gem install daylight

2. On your server, add a rails initializer:

   require 'daylight/server'

3. On your client, setup your API:

   Daylight::API.setup!(endpoint: 'http://localhost/')

4. Use your client models to query your API!

Development

Ah, but we have to develop our API and client models:

1. Develop your Rails models, controllers, and routes like you do today. Add a serializer for each model in the API. Daylight provides additions to simplify adding features to your controllers and routes.

2. Develop your client models using Daylight's extensions to ActiveResource. Daylight provides Mocks to aid in full stack testing of your client models.

3. Consider versioning your client models and distribute them using a gem. Daylight supports versioned APIs and has facilities available for your development.

4. More information can be found on:

   • Installation Steps
   • Daylight Users Guide
   • API Developer Guide
   • Testing Your API
   • How to Contribute

License

Daylight is released under the Apache License. First released on June 30th, 2014.