EventFinda Ruby

Ruby client for EventFinda API: www.eventfinda.co.nz

Features

• Intuitive API interface navigation.
• Currently supports a variety of the API methods for Events, Categories, Artists and Locations resources.
• Modular design allows for working with only parts of API you need.
• URL generation process fully tested when applying filters for each request.
• API integration tests recorded and fully tested using VCR gem: fast tests (first HTTP request is real and it's response is stored for future runs), deterministic (tests will continue to pass, even if you are offline, or eventfinda.co.nz goes down for maintenance) and accurate (responses will contain the same headers and body you get from a real request).

Installation

Install the gem by running:

gem install event_finda_ruby

or put it in your Gemfile and run bundle install:

gem "event_finda_ruby", "~> 0.3.4"

1. Usage

To start using the gem, you should get a developer account (free) from EventFinda's website: http://www.eventfinda.co.nz/api/v2/index

EventFinda will provide you with a username/password pair so you can use from now on.

Setup those credentials within an initializer:

# event_finda_initializer.rb

EventFindaRuby.configure do |config|
  config.username = "event_finda"
  config.password = "123123"
end

Then create a new filter instance (in this example, to retrieve Events) like so:

filter = EventFindaRuby::Events.new

and then call api methods, for instance, to filter free events:

filter.by_free

or featured events:

filter.by_featured

or free and featured events:

filter.by_free.by_featured

Once applied all the filters you need, make the API call to get the events:

filter.results

To see a full list of examples please check the wiki page.

2. Response

The response format is JSON by default. It can be changed to XML like this:

filter.with_extension("xml")

Results are provided as an array of objects with the following structure (JSON):

filter = EventFindaRuby::Events.new
filter.results
=> [
  { "id": 353192,
    "url": "http://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2016/resene-rainbow-run/new-plymouth",
    "url_slug": "2016/resene-rainbow-run/new-plymouth",
    "name": "Resene Rainbow Run: SOLD OUT",
    "presented_by": "",
    "description": "London, Glasgow, Sydney, Abu Dhabi, Melbourne, Queenstown, and now Taranaki! There's nothing else like it in Taranaki! Get together with your friends, family and colleagues to participate in Taranaki’s first ever ...",
    "datetime_start": "2016-04-10 11:00:00",
    "datetime_end": "2016-04-10 15:00:00",
    "location_summary": "Coastal Walkway, New Plymouth",
    "address": "New Plymouth Foreshore, New Plymouth",
    "is_free": false,
    "is_featured": true,
    "is_cancelled": false,
    "restrictions": "All Ages",
    "point": {
      "lat": -39.0594,
      "lng": 174.0513
    },
    "username": "lisarhx",
    "timezone": "Pacific/Auckland",
    "location": {...},
    "category": {...},
    "datetime_summary": "Sun 10 Apr",
    "sessions": {...},
    "ticket_types": {...},
    "artists": {...},
    "web_sites": {...},
    "images": {...}
  },..
]

For the sake of the example here, location, category, sessions, ticket_types, artists, websites and images keys contain more information related with the event that are not displayed above.

3. Modularity

This gem allow developers to query Events, Artists, Categories and Locations resources from the EventFinda API:

filter = EventFindaRuby::Events.new

filter = EventFindaRuby::Artists.new

filter = EventFindaRuby::Categories.new

filter = EventFindaRuby::Locations.new

4. Implementation

Setting up this gem to work is really easy. Even more if you use has_scope gem:

class EventsController < ApplicationController

  has_scope :by_free,        as: :free,        type: :boolean
  has_scope :by_featured,    as: :featured,    type: :boolean
  has_scope :by_price_min,   as: :price_min
  has_scope :by_price_max,   as: :price_max
  has_scope :by_keywords_or, as: :keywords_or, type: :array

  helper_method :collection

  def index
  end

  private

  def collection
    @collection ||= events_filter.results
  end

  def events_filter
    @events_filter ||= apply_scopes(filter)
  end

  def filter
    @filter ||= EventFindaRuby::Events.new
  end
end

A working example can be found here: My Budget App

5. Work in progress

• API timeout handling scenarios.

6. Development

Questions or problems? Please post them on the issue tracker. You can contribute changes by forking the project and submitting a pull request. You can ensure the tests are passing by running bundle and rake.

7. Copyright

Copyright © 2020 Juan Roldan. See LICENSE.txt for further details.