---
title: ActiveResource in a Flurry
teaser:
tags: web,rails
author: Eric Mill
published_on: 2007-04-26
---

A look at the [Rails Trac's timeline](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/timeline) shows
that ActiveResource is undergoing a lot of activity right now, including
attention by DHH.  Here's the interesting things I've noticed so far:

* [Changeset #6539](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/6539) - If you save an
  object, and get an <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr> body
  response from the controller, reload the object with the data from that
  response.  So, if the controller performs any machinations on an object while
  saving it, the client can be informed of the object's new state.
* [Changeset #6550](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/6550) - Replace Action
  Web Service with ActiveResource.
* [Changeset #6584](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/6584) - Custom method
  names for resources.  This is a big one.  I'm inferring what it does by the
  CHANGELOG comment:

      Added support for calling custom methods #6979 [rwdaigle]
      Person.find(:managers)    # => GET /people/managers.xml
      Kase.find(1).post(:close) # => POST /kases/1/close.xml

* [Changeset #6579](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/changeset/6579) - This expands
  the default scaffold_resource controller to respond to new.xml.  It will
  return a new object, in <abbr title="Extensible Markup Language">XML</abbr>
  form.  This can be used by a client to automatically figure out the attributes
  a model supports.  There's really no code change here to Rails itself, new.xml
  is given for free if you want it.  The significance is that it expands Rails'
  proposed standard for <abbr title="Representational State
  Transfer">REST</abbr>.

So altogether, ActiveResource is getting a lot more fleshed out.  I can't help
but expect we're going to see its public release soon, and this is awesome.

Another note: I'll be supporting that last one, about new.xml, in Jester in the
next release, because I submitted [the
patch](http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/8185) for it myself.  It'll
significantly benefit Jester, and I suspect any other non-Ruby ActiveResource
client out there.  I'll try to keep Jester up to date with ActiveResource, but
that's looking like a tall order.