To send structured types across the wire, derive from ActionWebService::Struct, and use member to declare structure members.

ActionWebService::Struct should be used in method signatures when you want to accept or return structured types that have no Active Record model class representations, or you don’t want to expose your entire Active Record model to remote callers.

Example

  class Person < ActionWebService::Struct
    member :id,         :int
    member :firstnames, [:string]
    member :lastname,   :string
    member :email,      :string
  end
  person = Person.new(:id => 5, :firstname => 'john', :lastname => 'doe')

Active Record model classes are already implicitly supported for method return signatures.

Methods
Public Class methods
member(name, type)

Creates a structure member with the specified name and type. Generates accessor methods for reading and writing the member value.

[ show source ]

    # File vendor/rails/actionwebservice/lib/action_web_service/struct.rb, line 39
39:       def member(name, type)
40:         write_inheritable_hash("struct_members", name => WS::BaseTypes.canonical_param_type_class(type))
41:         class_eval "def \#{name}; @\#{name}; end\ndef \#{name}=(value); @\#{name} = value; end\n"
42:       end
new(values={})

If a Hash is given as argument to an ActionWebService::Struct constructor, it can contain initial values for the structure member.

[ show source ]

    # File vendor/rails/actionwebservice/lib/action_web_service/struct.rb, line 25
25:     def initialize(values={})
26:       if values.is_a?(Hash)
27:         values.map{|k,v| send('%s=' % k.to_s, v)}
28:       end
29:     end
Public Instance methods
[](name)

The member with the given name

[ show source ]

    # File vendor/rails/actionwebservice/lib/action_web_service/struct.rb, line 32
32:     def [](name)
33:       send(name.to_s)
34:     end