-- RMU SESSION 4 EXERCISE 1

If in doubt about how to submit, see SUBMISSION_GUIDELINES file.

In this exercise, we will be building command line applications that allow users to interact with web services via the console. These applications must use one or more web services to implement their core featureset, but do not necessarily need to be simple client applications.

This exercise is pretty open ended, but please follow the guidelines listed below, as well as a couple examples of what you might build.

== GUIDELINES

• You may use any web service online tbat is freely available. Prefer those with a RESTful API, but even manual scraping via mechanize/nokogiri is acceptable.

• You may use any Ruby libraries/gems you'd like, with one exception: you must interact with your service at the HTTP level rather than using a gem designed for interacting with that service.

• You may use any HTTP client you'd like for interacting with your targeted web service. It's recommended to take a look at the standard library open-uri, as well as the ruby gems rest-client and httparty.

• You may use any gems or libraries you'd like for implementing your command line application. That said, consider checking the optparse standard library before using a gem for the sole purpose of option parsing.

• Use idiomatic Ruby conventions as much as possible. Throughout the session, writing code well is as important as meeting the requirements. But don't be afraid to ask for help, perfection is not expected in a first submission.

• Try to pick a realistic application, one that someone might actually want to use. Avoid contrived scenarios where possible. Include a good example of how to use your application.

• Try to make your command line application work well in a *nix environment by properly handling STDIN and STDOUT so that your application can be used in a pipeline.

• Avoid duplicating the work of other students. Announce on the mailing list what you're planning to build, and add a description to the notes section on the assignment's page in university-web.

== EXAMPLES

A command line application which will convert text from one language to another by using a translation service.

$ translate foo.txt --from english --to chinese

A command line application which will convert currency using a web service:

$ convert_currency "100 USD" --to RMB

Please don't use these examples directly, but feel free to build something similar in a different domain. You can also build more complicated applications (possibly even interactive ones) if you are feeling creative.

== QUESTIONS?

Hit up the mailing list or IRC. RMU exercises are left deliberately open ended, and often benefit from some discussion before, during, and after you work on them.

If you have little experience with web programming, please let me know and I'll collect some resources for you to get you up to speed. Not a ton of knowledge is needed to work through this exercise.