ActiveExtAPI
==========

ActiveExtAPI is a rails plugin that provides a simple ExtJS CRUD api to ActiveRecord models.

It simply provides 4 additional methods to ActiveRecord::Base that will return the data
expected by a ExtJS Store.

An ExtJS store can be setup with an API for crud operations.

ActiveExtAPI has a great synergy with the active-direct plugin as the combinaition will
provide a CRUD interface for your Ext DirectStores with almost no code.

It can also be used with regular Controller to provide a regular REST interface to your stores.

Being generic, the library is very useful for rapid developpment of prototypes.

Using it in a production application would be hazardous in it's current state as there is no
user access control mechanism meaning that any user of your application would potentially 
have access to all your models.

The 4 CRUD method the plugin provides are :

  - ext_read
  - ext_create
  - ext_update
  - ext_destroy

An extra api method is also provided to populate Ext Trees.
  - ext_get_nodes

A Form API also handles Form loading and submit
  - ext_form_load
  - ext_form_submit (Not implemented yet)

Notes : 
- ext_read supports most of the options taken by ActiveRecord::Base.find(:all, options = {})
- sorting is done through the Ext compliant :sort, :dir options
- records of linked models can be included in the result when using the :include options
- ext_update supports update on a linked model

See the method documentation for more details


Installation
============
  
  script/plugin install git@github.com:lelag/active-ext-api.git


active-direct integration
=======================

If you have the active-direct plugin installed in your rails application,
you can just call the class methods, acts_as_direct_ext_api method to make the 
4 crud method available to your client.

You can then setup the api config options of your DirectStore and you're done.

If you want to set up additionnal options, you can set the baseParams of your
stores accordingly.

active-direct home is at http://github.com/stonegao/active-direct

Example
=======

in your model

    class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
      acts_as_direct_ext_api        # <- that's it
    
      belongs_to :author
      belongs_to :publisher
      has_and_belongs_to_many :keywords
      has_and_belongs_to_many :categories
      has_many :loans
      has_many :users, :through => :loans
      has_many :following_books, :class_name => "Book", :foreign_key => "parent_book_id"
      belongs_to :parent_book, :class_name => "Book"
    end


in your DirectStore config

    api: {
        read: App.models.Track.ext_read,
        create: App.models.Track.ext_create,
        update: App.models.Track.ext_update,
        destroy: App.models.Track.ext_destroy
    }

  
if you want to include a linked secondary model :

     baseParams: {
         "include": [
             "author",
             "publisher"
         ]
     }

you would then be able to display a book's author name 
by seting up a field "author.name" in your record.


Copyright (c) 2010 Le Lag, released under the MIT license