From: James Britt Date: 2007-08-02T06:28:15+09:00 Subject: Re: Easy REST server w/o views or controllers? Luke Kanies wrote: > Hi all, > > I'm in the processing of refactoring Puppet[1]'s networking, which > currently uses xmlrpc over https but I'm moving to REST, and I'm hoping > to be able to rely largely on existing code for the new work. > > The weird situation with Puppet is that I'm only interested in > computer-computer communication and in most cases have no interest in > multiple forms of a given object, so I don't think I need views, and I'm > not using a db backend, which means I don't need an ORM like > ActiveRecord. Basically, I just need the controllers and routing, I think. > > I've looked around at most of the frameworks I can find, including > Nitro, Merb, Camping, and Rails, and all of them seem to assume that I > care deeply about databases and HTML, while really all I want to do is > make it easy to provide a REST-like interface for my software to use to > talk to itself. Interesting. One thing I like about Nitro is that it doesn't presume the use of a database. Model objects can be "enchanted" to magic persistence if needed, but otherwise they're just PORC. Og is not a requirement for a Nitro app. Same for Ramaze (which is similar to Nitro, but more modular). > > I plan on using ActiveResource[2] for the clients, and I'd love > something that was just as easy but handled the server side for me. > I've got 9 different namespaces in xmlrpc right now, but I want it to be > easy to add new controller types, of course. > > One of my biggest concerns with whatever I use is that it be easy to > distribute, since Puppet runs on all popular platforms (e.g., os x, > debian, ubuntu, rhel, fedora, solaris, freebsd) and is available as a > native package in most cases. I don't want people packaging puppet to > also have to package 10 other prerequisites, so I don't want to rely on > something that brings in 50 libraries to handle views or models that I > won't use. Look at Ramaze. -- James Britt "The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." - Bertrand Russell