ISeriesOnRails

Gem to make developing rails apps easier when working with DB2 on the ISeries/AS400

Installation

in your Gemfile:

gem 'iseries_on_rails', :git=>'https://github.com/bkulyk/iseries_on_rails'

Usage

Models

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ISeriesOnRails::Model # will automatically strip white space from char fields, and will replace nil values with empty strings
  include ISeriesOnRails::UpcaseString # will automatically upcase strings (char/varchar) fields before saveing
  include ISeriesOnRails::FakeAutoIncrement # will automatically fetch the highest value in the primary keys's field and incremnt by 1
end

Serializing Dates as Integers

By convention our RPG devlopers store dates in integer fields, which is inconventient in rails, so ISeriesOnRails has a method to serialize and unserialize dates as integers.

example: Date.new( 2013, 4, 15 ) is stored as the integer: 20130415

usage:

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize_date_as_integer :some_field
end

Serializing Phone Number as Integers

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize_phone_as_integer :some_field
end

Program Calls

You can use ISeriesOnRails to execute RPG programs. To do so, save a .pcml file in "#{Rails.root}/lib/pcml/" describing the RPG program's name and location as well as input and output parameters.

example:

<pcml version="1.0">
  <!-- describes how the xtname RPG program works -->
  <program name="person_name" path="/QSYS.lib/SOMELIB.lib/XTNAME.pgm">
    <data name="user_id"    type="char" length="9"  usage="inputoutput"  />
    <data name="last_name"  type="char" length="30" usage="inputoutput" init='' />
    <data name="first_name" type="char" length="30" usage="inputoutput" init='' />
  </program>
</pcml>

Once the .pcml file is in place you can execute the rpg program like:

input_params = { user_id => "0000000099" }
res = ISeriesOnRails::ProgramCall.run :person_name, input_params

puts res[:last_name]  # outputs: Jones
puts res['last_name'] # outputs: Jones
puts res.last_name    # outputs: Jones

For more info on .pcml files read: Building iSeries program calls with PCML