Getting up and running with the RestfulX framework and Ruby on Rails in 5 minutes

What you’ll need:

1. Ruby on Rails 2.1+ (2.3.2 Works!)
2. Flex SDK 3.0+
3. MySQL 5.0+

Before you start you might want to add Flex SDK bin folder to your $PATH variable if you haven’t already. This will allow you to invoke commands such as mxmlc from the command line and run rake tasks such as rx:flex:build and rx:air:build.

• On OS X it’s typically /Applications/Adobe Flex Builder 3/sdks/3.0.0/bin
• On Win32 it’s C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\sdks\3.0.0\bin

First, create your project:

$>sudo gem install restfulx
$>rails -d mysql pomodo
$>cd pomodo

Edit config/environment.rb and add:

config.gem "restfulx"

Then run:

$>./script/generate rx_config

Then create a file called db/model.yml:

$>touch db/model.yml

Edit db/model.yml to contain the following:

location:
  - name: string
  - notes: text
  - belongs_to: [user]
  - has_many: [tasks]

project:
  - name: string
  - notes: text
  - start_date: date
  - end_date: date
  - completed: boolean
  - belongs_to: [user]
  - has_many: [tasks]

task:
  - name: string
  - notes: text
  - start_time: datetime
  - end_time: datetime
  - completed: boolean
  - next_action: boolean
  - belongs_to: [project, location, user]

note:
  - content: text
  - belongs_to: [user]

user:
  - login: string
  - first_name: string
  - last_name: string
  - email: string
  - has_many: [tasks, projects, locations]
  - has_one: [note]

Now we can generate the app:

$>./script/generate rx_yaml_scaffold
$>rake db:refresh
$>rake rx:flex:build
$>./script/server

Navigate to http://localhost:3000

You are done!

Switching the app to AIR

$>./script/generate rx_config -a
$>rake rx:air:build
$>rake rx:air:run

Switching the AIR app back to a Flex app

$>./script/generate rx_config

Further Information

1. Getting Started with RestfulX and Ruby on Rails – This tutorial covers the same ground as the Getting Started with RestfulX and Rails in 5 minutes but goes over the steps in more detail as well as offers some background on scaffolding Flex + Rails applications using YAML db/model.yml file.

If you have an existing Rails application and you want to generate Flex artifacts only, use “rake db:schema:to_yaml”. This will generate a model.yml file for you based on your existing Rails schema.rb file. (If you’re not sure your schema.rb is up to date, run “rake db:schema:dump” to refresh schema.rb before you run db:schema:to_yaml.) Once you have a model.yml file simply run ./script/generate rx_yaml_scaffold --flex-only from your Rails app root.

While code generation is a quick way to get started, it falls far short of exposing you to all the things you can do with the framework. Examine the code you just generated and refer to Working with RestfulX Models for more information on what you can accomplish.

For more information on the RestfulX framework refer to RestfulX Framework Wiki

Want a more feature complete example? Check out Pomodo On Rails