Ruby web service.

[bradphelan]

Hi all,

I'm looking to make a web service probably with Sinatra. I'm a little
confused about the best way to structure parameter passing for POST /
PUT. I'd like to use XML formats for the data. I've found the
'active_record' Hash.to_xml and Hash.from_xml and I'm happy to settle
for that choice of encoding.

However I see two ways of doing constructing the POST/PUT body.

(a) Posting the XML parameter as the body of the post using an XML
content type
(b) Using URL encoding and setting a parameter

xml=<foo>...</foo>

Can I choose either approach or do I need to support both?

Regard Brad

 

[Brian Candler]

However I see two ways of doing constructing the POST/PUT body.

(a) Posting the XML parameter as the body of the post using an XML
content type
(b) Using URL encoding and setting a parameter

xml=<foo>...</foo>

Can I choose either approach or do I need to support both?

It's your app and your users, so you get to choose But (a) is the
standard way to handle XML uploads.

If you want to handle form data, note that Rack/Sinatra/Rails support
nested form elements, so for example

a[c]=1&a[d]=2

will give you params = {"a"=>{"b"=>{"c"=>"1","d"=>"2"}}}