Write Ruby API's with Stripe's Poncho (a DSL for REST interfaces)

As we said in a previous post: WE LOVE STRIPE!

The team at Stripe has open sourced a RubyGem that makes REST API’s easy to create, Poncho. It’s compatible with any rack-based framework — like Rails or Sinatra. Best of all, it has a slew of (simple to use) features:

• Standard Params: integer, array, boolean, etc
• Custom Params
• Standard Validators: presence, format, length, etc
• Custom Validators
• Method Filters
• And more...

Installation is simple, just install the poncho gem (or add gem poncho to your Gemfile). After installation, you can setup your API:

class ChargeResource < Poncho::Resource
  param :amount, :type => :integer
end

class ChargeCreateMethod < Poncho::JSONMethod
  param :amount, :type => :integer, :required => true

  def invoke
    charge = Charge.new
    charge.amount = param(:amount)
    charge.save

    ChargeResource.new(charge)
  end
end

post '/charges', &ChargeCreateMethod

The above code, which was pulled from the documentation is using Sinatra, but you could easily swap Rails out:

match '/charges' => ChargeCreateMethod, :via => :post

The documentation is thorough, and does a great job at explaining how to use Poncho. You can also view the source or discuss this on HackerNews.