ROTR

(Edit 2007-12-11: A little late to edit this, but "paster restcontroller" was quickly adopted into Pylons. What a great team they are!)

(Edit 2007-12-11: I no longer work on the SPHYRA project.)

It's a new calendar year, and with it comes the usual sense of renewal and thoughts of "I meant to do that last year, but didn't, so I should try again this year".

One of the things that I had been reading a lot about last year (and the year before, in fact) was REST. Now that I'm working on a fresh start for SPHYRA, now is the time for me to become a RESTafarian. I suppose it's only appropriate since I have dreadlocks that I've been growing and grooming for a little over a year now :)

In my search for useful information for implementing a RESTful web app using Pylons, I found information about RESTful services using Routes that came in handy. What I couldn't find was a template that could be cut-'n-pasted into a new controller module to save some typing.

Here is my first take at such a template. I haven't attached any code to it yet, so it's not guaranteed to be correct. As I attach code to it and/or receive commentary, I'll update this post so that it becomes more correct:

class ItemController(BaseController):

    def index(self, format='html'):
        """GET /: All items in the collection."""

    def create(self):
        """POST /: Create a new item."""

    def new(self, format='html'):
        """GET /new: Form to create a new item."""

    def update(self, id):
        """PUT /id: Update an existing item."""
        # Forms posted to this method should contain a hidden field:
        # <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="PUT" />

    def delete(self, id):
        """DELETE /id: Delete an existing item."""
        # Forms posted to this method should contain a hidden field:
        # <input type="hidden" name="_method" value="DELETE" />

    def show(self, id, format='html'):
        """GET /id: Show a specific item."""

    def edit(self, id, format='html'):
        """GET /id;edit: Form to edit an existing item."""

Perhaps this could be automated with a paster restcontroller thing things command in the next version of Pylons? :)