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The API on Rails tutorial application
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Suggestion: New version of book – let users test their end points more often #59

Open SpacyRicochet opened 8 years ago

SpacyRicochet commented 8 years ago

@kurenn Thanks again for the resource :)

After finishing chapter 3 I went through chapter 6 in an instant. However, testing the end points gave me a ton of problems, most of which I'm not sure about why they happen. This isn't a question about the problems (separate issue), but a suggestion.

During the chapters, let people test their end points with CURL more often. Sabiru works well enough, but has its own issues, which may cause people to test with other tools instead. For example, I use Paw.

I'm getting 422 – Unprocessable Entity issues, which I can't figure out, because I haven't learned about how to set up the exact payload. The only CURL example provided was a GET request without a payload. Adding more CURL examples would help a ton.

ghost commented 8 years ago

Or, since this book isn't going to hold your hand forever:

https://curl.haxx.se/docs/manual.html

SpacyRicochet commented 8 years ago

@SirUncleCid Yes, that's indeed a valid point. But I'm coming at it from a beginner's angle.

For (beginning) developers, man pages are quite obscure to plough through and they don't know much about the magic involved in much of Rails framework or maybe even how HTTP requests work in general. So even if they do know, it's hard to know what's supposed to happen.

More CURL examples help immensely with that.

For example; I fixed it by encasing the parameters in a todo dictionary in the body. However, that didn't work for awhile either, which is terribly confusing, because I didn't know what I should have been sending in the body. So I didn't even know whether my correct answer was actually correct.

kurenn commented 8 years ago

What would you suggest @SirUncleCid ? probably placing a pull request would be helpful

ghost commented 8 years ago

If you're working, let alone developing, API's already, may I suggest that you probably won't be a beginner?

kurenn commented 8 years ago

So you are suggesting me to stop developing? is it fine to think that what you meant is that the book is not good because I'm not good enough?

ghost commented 8 years ago

Surely you can't be serious

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 7:16 PM, Abraham notifications@github.com wrote:

So you are suggesting me to stop developing? is it fine to think that what you meant is that the book is not good because I'm not good enough?

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/kurenn/market_place_api/issues/59#issuecomment-210679765

kurenn commented 8 years ago

I did not understand quite well, that's why I'm asking :)

ghost commented 8 years ago

You should be starting at the more basic areas of Rails. If you're building a basic API, ok then you could easily do that in any backend framework, but if you start to require things like authorization and authentication, dealing with ORMs, etc., you have some fundamental areas to focus on first.

Another thing: if you don't know how to consume an API, how do you expect to be able to create a well formed one?

On Fri, Apr 15, 2016 at 7:31 PM, Abraham notifications@github.com wrote:

I did not understand quite well, that's why I'm asking :)

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/kurenn/market_place_api/issues/59#issuecomment-210683093

ghost commented 8 years ago

Sorry, I'm really tired and my ideas may be everywhere. I'm just saying learning cURL should not be included in the scope of this book. There are plenty of resources to learn how to use cURL. Do not clutter this resource where alternatives are clearly available.

SpacyRicochet commented 8 years ago

@SirUncleSid, I'm rather sorry to notice you appear to be coming at this from a very elitist point of view.

Instead of realizing there are several different kinds of beginners, which may be reading this book with different perspectives, you just assume that everyone has to have some very specific knowledge about the subject matter and if not, they're not even qualified to read this book.

"Man page or GTFO" isn't a constructive comment, especially if you dismiss concerns about that advice with the sole reason; "You're not supposed to be a beginner."

ghost commented 8 years ago

Please, lets have a chapter on how to use cURL then.

On Tue, Apr 19, 2016 at 1:11 PM, Bruno Scheele notifications@github.com wrote:

@SirUncleSid, I'm rather sorry to notice you appear to be coming at this from a very elitist point of view.

Instead of realizing there are several different kinds of beginners, which may be reading this book with different perspectives, you just assume that everyone has to have some very specific knowledge about the subject matter and if not, they're not even qualified to read this book.

"Man page or GTFO" isn't a constructive comment, especially if you dismiss concerns about that advice with the sole reason; "You're not supposed to be a beginner."

— You are receiving this because you were mentioned. Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/kurenn/market_place_api/issues/59#issuecomment-212022186