brancusi / ruby

PubNub Ruby-based APIs

Please direct all Support Questions and Concerns to [email protected]

PubNub Gem version 3.7.1

YOU MUST HAVE A PUBNUB ACCOUNT TO USE THE API.

http://www.pubnub.com/account

www.pubnub.com - PubNub Real-time Push Service in the Cloud.

The PubNub Network is a blazingly fast Global Messaging Service for building real-time web and mobile apps. Thousands of apps and developers rely on PubNub for delivering human-perceptive real-time experiences that scale to millions of users worldwide. PubNub delivers the infrastructure needed to build amazing Mobile, MMO games, social apps, business collaborative solutions, and more.

Upgrading from PubNub 3.5.x

We've made the response format compatible across all operations. This may break existing parsing of whereNow, leave, state, and PAM responses. So if you are monitoring these operation responses, please be sure to modify your code accordingly.

Examples of affected operations can be found here.

Upgrading from PubNub 3.3.x and Earlier

PubNub 3.7.1 is NOT compatible with earlier than 3.4 versions of Pubnub Ruby Client.

Upgrading from PubNub 3.4 and higher versions

PubNub 3.7.1 is compatible with 3.4 version.

Important Notice about Blocking vs Non-Blocking Calls

Asynchronous vs Synchronous Requests

Every operation is by default asynchronous. Asynchronous operations will not block your main thread and will be fired within a new thread.

This can cause issues under certain situations, depending on your implementation. To work around this, you can force an operation to run synchronously (block) via the :http_sync option:

:http_sync => true

Unless otherwise specified, this option is default implied false (all calls by default will be async).

Message Handling: callback, block, return

Results are provided via block, callback, and return, depending on how you structure the call. Callback will be fired for every message that will event get in response. Synchronous events will return array of envelopes (if you passed callback to sychronous event it will be called too!).

Code Examples

Require

require 'pubnub'

Init and instantiate a new PubNub instance

# If you wish to override the default logger, create one and pass it in.
# Default logger writes into pubnub.log file

my_logger = Logger.new(STDOUT)

pubnub = Pubnub.new(
    :subscribe_key    => 'demo',
    :publish_key      => 'demo',
    :error_callback   => lambda { |msg|
      puts "Error callback says: #{msg.inspect}"
    },
    :connect_callback => lambda { |msg|
      puts "CONNECTED: #{msg.inspect}"
    },
    :logger => my_logger
)

• subscribe_key is your subscribe key
• publish_key is your publish key
• origin is your custom, PubNub origin (Contact support before production to get your own!)
• error_callback is the callback for errors
• connect_callback is the callback that lets you know when you're connected to the origin

Making PubNub calls

There are a few different ways to make any given PubNub call. How to do it depends first on whether or not you want the call to be blocking (synchronous), or not blocking (asynchronous).

Asynchronous (non-blocking) calling

If you wish to make asyncronous calls (implemented via EventMachine), you have a few different patterns you can follow:

# Lets use a callback for the first example...
cb = lambda { |envelope| puts envelope.message }

# Asynchronous is implicitly enabled by default, if you do not provide an :http_sync option
pubnub.publish(:message => msg, :channel => channel, :callback => cb)

# You can also explicitly request async with :http_sync => false
pubnub.publish(:message => msg, :channel => channel, :callback => cb, :http_sync => false)

# Alternatively, you can pass in the callback as a block

pubnub.publish(:message => msg, :channel => channel, &cb)

pubnub.publish(:message => msg, :channel => channel) do |envelope|
    puts envelope.message
    puts envelope.channel
    puts envelope.status_code
    puts envelope.timetoken
end

Synchronous (blocking) calling

Synchronous calling is required when using PubNub with JRuby.

If you'd prefer to make your calls blocking (implemented via HTTParty), set :http_sync => true. Again, there is a bit of flexibility in how this can be done:

# Lets use a callback for the first example...
cb = lambda { |envelope| puts envelope.message }

# Sync (blocking) with a callback (if you wanted to)
pubnub.publish(:http_sync => true, :message => msg, :channel => channel, &cb)

# Sync (blocking), with assignment via return
myResponse = pubnub.publish(:http_sync => true, :message => msg, :channel => channel)
puts "myR: #{myResponse.inspect}"

# Sync (blocking), with a block
pubnub.publish(:http_sync => true, :message => msg, :channel => channel) do |envelope|
    puts envelope.message
    puts envelope.channel
    puts envelope.status_code
    puts envelope.timetoken
end

Callback / Block calling sequence

When you receive messages asynchronously from PubNub, your block or callback will be called once for each message received. For example, if you are subscribed to a channel using the callback pattern, and you receive 3 messages from your call, the callback will be called 3 times, 1 time for each unique received message.

Conceptually, the callback or block is fired once for each message in the raw server response:

envelopes.each do |envelope|
    callback.call envelope
end

The Envelope Object

The callback (or block) will receive the message(s) in the form of an envelope hash. An envelope will contain the following keys:

• message (aliased as 'msg') -> Holds message, if publish, holds published message
• response_message -> as above, except that if publish holds server response (String "Send")
• channel -> Holds channel for current message
• timetoken -> Timetoken of server response
• status (aliased as 'status_code') -> Server response status code
• response -> Whole and unmodified server response
• first -> true if it's first envelope in single response messages array
• last -> true if it's last envelope in single response messages array
• And a bit more, specific to some events, you will find it in description of certain events

Don't confuse the message with the response. In a given callback cycle, the response will always be the same, as its the raw server response. It may consist of one or more messages.

Internally, the block or callback iterates over the response array, similar to:

envelopes.each do |envelope|
    callback.call envelope
end

In a given callback cycle, the envelope will be the current element of the response array.

Simple Usage Examples

Init and instantiate a new PubNub instance

pubnub = Pubnub.new(
    :subscribe_key    => 'demo',
    :publish_key      => 'demo',
    :origin           => origin,
    :uuid			   => "myUserID",
    :error_callback   => lambda { |msg|
      puts "SOMETHING TERRIBLE HAPPENED HERE: #{msg.inspect}"
    },
    :connect_callback => lambda { |msg|
      puts "CONNECTED: #{msg.inspect}"
    }
)

Publish

When publishing, send a string, number, array, or hash. PubNub automatically serializes it to JSON for you, so you don't have to.

@my_callback = lambda { |envelope| puts(envelope.msg) }

pubnub.publish(
    :channel  => "hello_world",
    :message  => "hi",
    :callback => @my_callback
)

Subscribe

pubnub.subscribe(
    :channel  => :hello_world,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

Leave

Unsubscribes from given channel (:channel) or channel group (:group) and fires leave event. You need to be subscribed (only async counts) to channel that You want to leave.

pubnub.subscribe(
    :channel  => :hello_world,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

pubnub.leave(
    :channel => :hello_world,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

If you want to force leave channel that you're not subscribed to, you can pass :force option to event

# Wrong
pubnub.leave(
    :channel => :not_subbed_channel,
    :callback => @my_callback
)
# We'll get error:
Pubnub::ArgumentError: You cannot leave channel that is not subscribed

# Good
p.leave(
    :channel => :force_leave,
    :force => true,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

History

Retrieve previously published messages (requires activation via admin.pubnub.com) Optional start, end, and reverse option usage can be found in the tests.

pubnub.history(
    :channel  => channel,
    :count    => 10,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

Presence

In real-time see people join and leave with occupancy summaries. (requires activation via admin.pubnub.com)

pubnub.presence(
    :channel  => :hello_world,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

pubnub.presence(
    :group    => 'foo:',
    :callback => @my_callback
)

HereNow

See who is "here now" in a channel (:channel) or channel group (:group) at this very moment.

pubnub.here_now(
    :channel  => channel,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

pubnub.here_now(
    :group    => channel_group,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

WhereNow

See where is client with specific uuid

p.where_now(
    :uuid => :my_friend,
    :callback => @my_callback
)

UUID

UUID is set in the initializer. A unique one is created, unless you specify one explicitly. To retrieve the current UUID:

pubnub.uuid

If you wish to manually set a custom UUID, pass in a uuid key in the initializer. See "Init and instantiate a new PubNub instance" for an example.

Time

Get the current PubNub time. This is great to use as a "PubNub Ping"

pubnub.time("callback" => @my_callback)

Channel Groups

Channel grouping is new feature introduced in Pubnub 3.7. It allows to group channels into channel-groups and channel-groups into namespaces. For example you can add weather and sport channel to news channel group, and news and local_ads to tv namespace. Namespaces and channel groups are described as namespace:channel_group e.g. tv:news. All channel-groups in namespace are described as namespace: e.g. tv:. Non-namespaced channel groups are described as non-namespaced-channel-group eg. global_alerts.

All channel groups specific operations can be issued with #channel_registration method.

Getting info

Getting all non-namespaced channel groups

# Response envelope will hold info as hash in payload attribute.
pubnub.channel_registration(action: :list_groups, http_sync: true)

Getting all channel groups in given namespace

# Response envelope will hold info as hash in payload attribute.
pubnub.channel_registration(action: :get, group: 'foo:', http_sync: true)

Getting all channels in channel group

# Response envelope will hold info as hash in payload attribute.
pubnub.channel_registration(action: :get, group: 'foo:foo', http_sync: true)

Adding

Add channel to namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :add, group: 'foo:new_group', channel: :bot, http_sync: true)

Add channel to non-namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :add, group: 'new_group', channel: :bot, http_sync: true)

Removing

Remove namespace and all channel groups

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :remove, group: 'foo:', http_sync: true)

Remove namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :remove, group: 'foo:cg', http_sync: true)

Remove non-namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :remove, group: 'cg', http_sync: true)

Remove channel from namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :remove, group: 'foo:cg', channel: :to_remove, http_sync: true)

Remove channel from non-namespaced channel group

pubnub.channel_registration(action: :remove, group: 'cg', channel: :to_remove, http_sync: true)

PAM

Developers can grant/revoke/audit fine-grained permissions for their real-time apps and data at various levels.

Envelopes returned by PAM events have additional :service and :payload keys.

PAM Usage Examples

When you issue a PAM operation, you can pass the presence key, the 'channel' key, or both.

# Will grant :r and :w permissions to demo-pnpres channel
pubnub.grant(:presence => :demo) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.message
end

# Will grant :r and :w permissions to demo channel
pubnub.grant(:channel => :demo) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.message
end

# Will grant :r and :w permissions to demo and demo-pnpres channels
pubnub.grant(:presence => :demo, :channel => :demo) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.message
end

# For channel groups, all above work.
# But channel groups additionally have :manage option.

# Will grant :r, :w and :m permissions to foo:foo
pubnub.grant(:group => 'foo:foo') do |envelope|
  puts envelope.message
end

Audit

Audits auths for given parameters

pubnub.audit(:channel => :forbidden_for_jim) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

pubnub.audit(:channel => :forbidden_for_jim, :auth_key => :jim) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

Grant

Grants auths for given parameters, you can pass :read and :write keys as parameters

pubnub.grant(:channel => :forbidden_to_write, :read => true, :write => false) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

pubnub.grant(:channel => :forbidden_to_write, :read => true, :write => true, :auth_key => :admin) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

Revoke

Revokes right to read and write. Same as granting r:0 w:0.

pubnub.revoke(:channel => :forbidden) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

pubnub.grant(:channel => :forbidden, :auth_key => :godzilla) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.payload
end

Advanced Usage Examples

Init

# Example below shows passing more options for client
# Pubnub.new returns Pubnub::Client instance
pubnub = Pubnub.new(
  :error_callback             => custom_error_callback,
  :connect_callback           => custom_connect_callback,
  :ssl                        => true,
  :uuid                       => 'newton',
  :port                       => 80,
  :origin                     => custom_origin,
  :subscribe_timeout          => 310,
  :non_subscribe_timeout      => 5,
  :max_retries                => 10, # max retries if response got invalid json
  :ttl                        => custom_default_ttl_for_pam,
  :secret_key                 => 0
)

Custom logger

You can pass your custom logger as :logger key while creating new Pubnub instance. Logger invocations has set progname 'Pubnub'.

Publish

# Message could be any object that have .to_json method
# You do not need to jsonify message before sending!

# This time publish event will block main thread until callback will finish as we set :http_sync to true
pubnub.publish(
  :messsage => message,
  :channel  => :whatever,
  :http_sync => true )

Subscribe

# You can pass in :channel or :channels String, Symbol, Array of both, or csv separated with commas, remember, as space is valid channel part, there should not be any spaces between commas (unless you want them)
# Some example of valid channels:
# :example_symbol
# 'example_string'
# [:one, :two, 'three']
# [:anything]
# 'one,two,three'

# Firing sync subscribe could lock your thread even for 5 minutes
# When there's no traffic on channel server will send timetoken without
# any messages every ~300s.
# First sync subscribe will just update your timetoken, you will not get any messages
# example:
pubnub.subscribe(:channel => 'alerts', :http_sync => true) # just update timetoken
pubnub.subscribe(:channel => 'alerts', :http_sync => true) # Will fire request with current timetoken and can possibly get messages

# Async subscribe starts infinity loop in seperate thread (EM.periodic_timer precisely)
# It will update your timetoken and will fire given callback for every message that it gets
# example:
pubnub.subscribe(
  :channel => 'fight_log'
) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.message['attacker']
  puts envelope.message['defender']
  puts envelope.message['damage']
end

Channel groups

You can subscribe to channel group same way as You're subscribing to channels.

pubnub.subscribe(group: 'foo:foo', channel: :ping_3, callback: callback)

Response envelopes will hold channel and channel_group values. So, if You want to subscribe to channel group and your callback need to know where are envelopes from, You can check it using envelope.channel_group. Of course You can subscribe to channel group and plain channel at once.

History

History returns :count messages from given channel.

pubnub.history(
  :channel  => :actions,
  :count    => 10,
  :start    => 13942156708212448,
  :end      => 13942156908212448,
  :callback => replay
)

:reverse set to true will traverse the time line in reverse starting with the newest message first. Default is false. If both start and end arguments are provided, reverse is ignored and messages are returned starting with the newest message.

pubnub.history(
  :channel  => :actions,
  :count    => 10,
  :reverse  => true,
  :callback => replay
)

History envelope also contains .history_start and .history_end values

Paged History

Paginate through your history. You can pass :channel, :page, :limit, :callback, :http_sync, :start and :end options, all of them works like in history event.

pubnub.paged_history(
  :channel   => :actions,
  :limit     => 10,
  :page      => 3,
  :http_sync => true
)

Presence

Presence works exactly the same way as subscribe, it just adds '-pnpres' to channel name.

pubnub.presence(
  :channel => :mars
) do |envelope|
  show_in_roster(envelope.uuid)
end

HereNow

HereNow shows us who is currently subscribing channel and how much clients are online on given channel.

pubnub.here_now(
  :channel => :pamam_moon_iv
) do |envelope|
  puts envelope.parsed_response['uuids']
  puts envelope.parsed_response['occupancy']
end

You can also give no specific channel. Then you'll get global HereNow event response which holds all channels.

pubnub.here_now { |envelope| puts envelope.parsed_response['channels'] }

Heartbeat

Heartbeat (expressed in seconds) is used to signal to the server that the client is still online. If the client disconnects without a leave event, others observing presence on the channel will not notice that this client has left the channel until a maximum of heartbeat interval seconds.

You normally will never need to touch this value, unless your Ruby client resides on a poor or mobile connection.

pubnub = Pubnub.new(:subscribe_key => 'demo', :heartbeat => 60)

Update it via heartbeat= and set_heartbeat()

pubnub.heartbeat = 120
pubnub.set_heartbeat 240

Read it via heartbeat and get_heartbeat()

pubnub.heartbeat
pubnub.get_heartbeat

Pam

PAM allows you to grant read and write access basing on channels and auth_keys. Every pam event requires :secret_key (Remember! You should set it while initializing pubnub)

PAM actions could take :presence option, that will grant/revoke/audit permissions on given presence channel. :presence option can be used along with :channel.

Audit

pubnub.audit(:channel => 'hidden_system'){ |envelope| puts envelope.msg }

Grant

# Channel level
pubnub.grant(:channel => 'hidden_system', :read => true, :write => false){ |envelope| puts envelope.msg }

# Auth key level
pubnub.grant(:channel => 'hidden_system', :read => true, :write => false, :auth_key => :lemon){ |envelope| puts envelope.msg }

Revoke

Revoke is equal to grant with w false, read false

# Channel level
pubnub.revoke(:channel => 'hidden_system'){ |envelope| puts envelope.msg }

# Auth key level
pubnub.revoke(:channel => 'hidden_system', :auth_key => :lemon){ |envelope| puts envelope.msg }

State

State is stored on the server for subscribed uuid, you can pass state in few ways and you can get it from server.

Setting state

# You can set state in a few ways
# Using subscribe
pubnub.subscribe(:channel => 'my_channel', :state => {:my_channel => {:key => :value}}){ |e| puts e.msg }
# Be aware that state have to be hash of hashes where keys are subscribed channel names

# Using event #set_state
pubnub.set_state(:state => {:key => :value}, :channel => :my_channel, :http_sync => true)

# or with channel groups
pubnub.set_state(:state => {:key => :value}, :group => 'foo:foo', :http_sync => true)

Getting state

# All you need to know is just uuid and channel
pubnub.state(:uuid => 'uuid_client_that_i_am_searching_for', :http_sync => true)

State and channel groups

State works fine with channel groups too! Just pass the :group key when setting or do it while subscribing.

Other

Advanced usage examples can be found also in the examples directory.

demo_console

A demo console app which shows how to use just about every PubNub Ruby call, just about every possible way!

translator

A chat room, with real-time translation! This is using PubNub for the real-time chat, and Bing translation services for babel.

pubnub_livestream

Demo rails chat app. It has also been tested with Heroku.

sinatra

Sinatra demo.

sub_and_unsub_1

Mixing up some async pubs and subs, using blocks and callbacks.

serial_publish

Publish 10000 times with an explicit 0.05s delay between publishes

Proxy support

Basic proxy is supported using ENV global, before initializing pubnub just set:

ENV['HTTP_PROXY']      = 'http://my.poxy/'
ENV['HTTP_PROXY_USER'] = 'user'
ENV['HTTP_PROXY_PASS'] = 'secret'

after that you can initialize pubnub object as always.

Comment on Passenger users

Passenger is orphaning threads and it causes issues with EM which is need to run async pubnub events. Below is fix that worked with our tests. You should fire that code from your initializers.

Some other environments could cause similar problems with EM, if you think you're affected, feel free to open issue and we will do our best to help.

module Pubnub
  # Taken from http://www.hiringthing.com/2011/11/04/eventmachine-with-rails.html
  # Thanks Joshua!
  def self.start
    if defined?(PhusionPassenger)
      PhusionPassenger.on_event(:starting_worker_process) do |forked|
        # for passenger, we need to avoid orphaned threads

        $my_logger.debug "=> Starting worker process"

        if forked && EM.reactor_running?
          $my_logger.debug "=> EventMachine stopped fork"
          EM.stop
        end
        Thread.new {
          EM.run do
            $my_logger.debug "=> EventMachine started"
          end
        }
        die_gracefully_on_signal
      end
    end
  end

  def self.die_gracefully_on_signal
    $my_logger.debug "=> EventMachine stopped die"
    Signal.trap("INT")  { EM.stop }
    Signal.trap("TERM") { EM.stop }
  end
end

Pubnub.start

Please direct all Support Questions and Concerns to [email protected]