From: Chad Perrin <code@...>
Date: 2012-05-31T00:01:35+09:00
Subject: Re: my first gem

On Sun, May 27, 2012 at 01:37:19AM +0900, chris potts wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> I am a newbie ruby hobbyist and have just signed of my first gem.
> 
> I fully appreciate it is a load of old todger, and other gems exist
> already.
> 
> Any comments appreciated
> 
> Also it doesnt seem to initialise into rails 3.2 app properly, or do i
> have to require it specifically?
> 
> https://github.com/iCPU/ebay_party

Maybe it's just me, but for something like this I'd prefer a
configuration file over the use of environment variables.  Perhaps you
could add some functionality for falling back on configuration files if
the specified environment variables are not set.

In your requestXML variable, you might want to think about using %Q for
quoting instead of double quotes so you will not have to escape the
double quotes in the content of the string.  You can use braces even
though you have brace-delimited code interpolated within your string:

    irb
    >> foo = 'foo'
    => "foo"
    >> bar = %Q{The value of foo is "#{foo}".}
    => "The value of foo is \"foo\"."

Good job using a friendly license and including file indicating the
license for the project (the LICENSE file, in this case).  It seems like
many people forget to do that.

Are you planning to add more functionality to the API in the future?

-- 
Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]