CoachClient

A wrapper around the CyberCoach API of the University of Fribourg.

• Rubygem website
• API Documentation
• GitHub

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'coach_client'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install coach_client

Every action to a CyberCoach service requires a client. The client contains the URL to the service, the maximum size of requests and provides some methods to retrieve resources.

client = CoachClient::Client.new('http://diufvm31.unifr.ch:8090',
                                 '/CyberCoachServer/resources/')

All CyberCoach resources follow the same basic principles.

• save saves the resource on the CyberCoach service (creates or overwrites it).
• update updates the resource with the data from CyberCoach service (fetch).
• delete deletes the resource on the CyberCoach service.
• exist? returns whether the resource exists on the CyberCoach service.

A user is identified by the username which has to be specified on creation.

user = CoachClient::User.new(client, 'myusername')

All the attributes of the user can be accessed and changed directly

user.username                #=> "myusername"
user.password                #=> nil
user.password = 'mypassword' #=> "mypassword"

Or the attributes can be supplied as optional arguments on creation

user = CoachClient::User.new(client, 'myusername', password: 'mypassword')
user.username #=> "myusername"
user.password #=> "mypassword"

A list of users can be obtained with the class method list. It takes an optional block, which acts as a filter and therefore only returns the users for which the block returns a true value. If the block is omitted, the whole list is returned.
The list is divided into chunks by the CyberCoach service. To retrieve the complete list the optional parameter all can be set to true.
As the user informations are not provided in the list, each user has to be updated individually in order to apply filtering on them. This requires a GET request every time.

# lists only the users with a username with less than 5 characters
CoachClient::User.list(client) { |user| user.username.length < 5 }

# lists all available users
CoachClient::User.list(client, all: true)

# lists only the users with an email address ending with '.ch'
CoachClient::User.list(client) do |user|
  user.update # required to retrieve email address
  user.email.end_with?('.ch')
end

To verify if the credentials are valid the method authenticated? is used. If credentials need to be tested without having to create a new user, the method in the client can be used.

user.authenticated? #=> true

client.authenticated?('myusername', 'mypassword') #=> true

A partnership is a relationship between two users. The users can be passed as CoachClient::User objects. If this it not the case, it tries to create them.
Passing a user object is recommended because it contains the already established informations (most importantly the password, which is needed for some requests). The users can be accessed and changed accordingly.

# partnership between the user created above and a user with the username 'mypartner'
partnership = CoachClient::Partnership.new(client, user, 'mypartner')

# set password of 'mypartner'
partnership.user2.password = 'hispassword'

The partnership provides a class method list that is used to obtain a list of partnerships, which works the same way as the User.list.

# lists only the partnerships for which user1 is 'myusername' and the 
# user2 has confirmed the partnership.
CoachClient::Partnership.list(client) do |partnership|
  return false unless partnership.user1.username == 'myusername'
  partnership.update # only update when the first condition succeeded
  partnership.user2_confirmed
end

To obtain the partnerships of a specific user, use the partnerships attribute of the user, instead of traversing the entire list. Even though the partnership on the CyberCoach service does not always provide the user that had done the request as the first user in the partnership, the list of partnerships returned ensures that user1 == user. The update method takes the same parameters as the list and is applied to the partnerships list, because the CyberCoach service does only provide chunks of partnerships.

user.update(all: true) # needed to get all the partnerships from the CyberCoach service
user.partnerships

user.partnerships.all? { |partnership| partnership.user1 == user } #=> true

The partnership uses the following methods to modify its status:

• propose proposes a partnership by user1
• confirm confirms a partnership by user2
• cancel cancels the confirmation of user1
• invalidate invalidates the confirmation of user2

When using save on a partnership that is not operational, it first tries to propose and confirm it. Similarly delete will try to invalidate it before deleting it.

The sport resource cannot be modified on the CyberCoach service and therefore the methods save and delete are not supported.
The sports are identified by a Symbol of their names. On creation the name is converted into a symbol. The name is case insensitive.

sport  = CoachClient::Sport.new(client, :running)
sport2 = CoachClient::Sport.new(client, 'running')
sport3 = CoachClient::Sport.new(client, 'RUnNinG')

sport.sport  #=> :running
sport2.sport #=> :running
sport3.sport #=> :running

The list of sports can be obtained with the class method list in the same manner as the users and partnerships.

A subscription consists of sport and either a user or a partnership. For that matter use CoachClient::UserSubscription and CoachClient::PartnershipSubscription respectively. They are essentially the same besides the subject being a user or a partnership and can therefore be used almost identically.

As for the other resources the user or partnership and the sport may be passed as the corresponding object. When an argument is not the object, it tries to create it. For partnerships a string representation is expected in that case, which represents the two users involved separated by a semicolon (e.g. 'user1;user2'). Using already existing objects is recommended to preserve the already assigned attributes.

user_sub = CoachClient::UserSubscription.new(client, user, sport)
part_sub = CoachClient::PartnershipSubscription.new(client, partnership, sport)

To retrieve the subscriptions of a particular user or partnership, the subscriptions attribute of the respective object is used.

user.update # needed to get the subscriptions from the CyberCoach service
user.subscriptions

partnership.update # needed to get the subscriptions from the CyberCoach service
partnership.subscriptions

An entry corresponds to a subscription. The entry provides the method create to create a new entry. This is automatically invoked when trying to save the entry, if it does not exist on the CyberCoach service. When create is used on an already existing entry, it creates a new one with the same attributes (apart from the id).

entry = CoachClient::Entry.new(client, user_sub, publicvisible: 2, comment: 'my comment')

entry.exist?  #=> false
entry.save
entry.id      #=> 1
entry.comment #=> 'my comment'
entry.exist?  #=> true

entry.create
entry.id      #=> 2
entry.comment #=> 'my comment'

To see all entries of a subscription use the attribute entries of the subscription. Similar to user.update the subscription's update takes additional parameters to specify the list of subscriptions to retrieve.

user_sub.update(all: true) # needed to get all the entries from the CyberCoach service
user.entries

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.