calvinkw1 / omdb_rails_lab

Use Typhoeus, Rails, and AJAX to hit the OMDB API

OMDB Rails Lab

Remember the OMDB Lab? In the third week of class we used AJAX to call OMDB's API for movie information. We're going to do a similar lab, but this time we're going to incorporate our newfound server-side knowledge.

Goals

• Do all of the OMDB API interaction from within Rails. Any AJAX requests you make should only be from the browser to your server.
• Use the Typheous library to call the OMDB API from Rails.
• Create a search page that allows you to search for movies.
• As an improvement, use AJAX to call your server, which will call OMDB, and send JSON back to the browser than can be used to render the search results.

Part 1

Building a Rails app and using Typhoeus make OMDB API requests.

1. Create a new Rails app.
2. Add the typhoeus gem to your Gemfile.
3. Create a movies controller.
4. In your movies/index.html.erb template create a search form. Read the best practices for creating search forms in Section 1.1
5. In your movies_controller.rb have an action handle the form submission and grab the search term the user entered.
6. Search OMDB for movies with that title using Typheous.
7. The results will be returned as a JSON string. Convert it into a Ruby object.
8. Pass the search results to a template you create and render the list of results in the template.

Part 2

You should have a (minimally) functional site after Part 1. However, we did not use any AJAX nor did we have our Rails app act as a JSON API. Let's do both of those things now.

Instead of having your search form cause a page refresh, use JavaScript to make an AJAX request to your server (which will then call OMDB). Then, instead of your server rendering the results in a template, it should return them as JSON to the browser. Use JavaScript to render the results (either with jQuery, or using Handlebars, if you want to be fancy).

1. Rename movies.js.coffee to movies.js and,
2. DELETE THE COMMENTS. Rails generates CoffeeScript files by default, but we don't want to use CoffeeScript. # is not the comment syntax in JavaScript, so we need to delete those too.
3. Rails provides jQuery for us (see for yourself in application.js) so you can just start using it.
4. Use jQuery to listen for the submit event on the form. Prevent the page from taking it's default action.
5. Use one of $.ajax(), .get(), or $.getJSON() to call your server with the search term the user typed in.
6. In your controller, search OMDB just as you did in Part 1, but this time use respond_to to return JSON to the browser.
7. Use jQuery to render the list of movies client-side.

Bonus #1

Use Handlebars to render the list of movies after your AJAX request. Check out handlebars_assets if you're interested in integrating Handlebars templates with your Rails application.

Bonus #2

Implement the movies#show page that will give more information on a specific movie.