desk.com APIv2

desk.com has released v2 of their REST API a few months ago and provides a lot more functionality. You should read up on the current progress of the API. This library wraps all of it into an easy to use ruby module. We’ll try to keep up with the changes of the API but things might still break unexpectedly.

Installation

gem install desk_api

Example

This example shows you how to create a new client and establish a connection to the API. It shows the four request methods supported by the desk.com API (GET, POST, PATCH and DELETE).

# Basic Auth
client = DeskApi::Client.new username: '[email protected]', password: 'somepassword', subdomain: 'devel'
# OAuth
client = DeskApi::Client.new({
  token: 'TOKEN',
  token_secret: 'TOKEN_SECRET',
  consumer_key: 'CONSUMER_KEY',
  consumer_secret: 'CONSUMER_SECRET',
  subdomain: 'devel'
})

response = client.get '/api/v2/topics'
response = client.post '/api/v2/topics', name: 'My new Topic', allow_questions: true
response = client.patch '/api/v2/topics/1', name: 'Changed the Topic Name'
response = client.delete '/api/v2/topics/1' 

For ease of use and if you only create one connection to the desk.com API you can use DeskApi directly:

DeskApi.configure do |config|
  config.username = '[email protected]'
  config.password = 'somepassword'
  config.subdomain = 'devel'
end

DeskApi.get '/api/v2/topics'
DeskApi.post '/api/v2/topics', name: 'My new Topic', allow_questions: true
DeskApi.patch '/api/v2/topics/1', name: 'Changed the Topic Name'
DeskApi.delete '/api/v2/topics/1'

Working with Resources and Collections

The API supports RESTful resources and so does this wrapper. These resources are automatically discovered, meaning you can navigate around without having to worry about anything. We also support two finder methods by_url and find.

Finders

The method by_url can be called on all DeskApi::Resource instances and will return a lazy loaded instance of the resource. Since the update to v0.5 of the API wrapper the find method can now be called on all DeskApi::Resource instances too. Gotcha: It will rebuild the base path based on the resource/collection it is called on. So if you call it on the cases collection DeskApi.cases.find 1 the path will look like this: /api/v2/cases/:id.

Method	Path
DeskApi.cases.find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1
DeskApi.cases.entries.find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1
DeskApi.cases.search(subject: 'Test').find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1
DeskApi.cases.search(subject: 'Test').entries.find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1
DeskApi.cases.entries.first.replies.find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1/replies/1
DeskApi.cases.entries.first.replies.entries.first.find(1)	/api/v2/cases/1/replies/1

Pagination

As mentioned above you can also navigate between resources and pages of collections. Please Notice: DeskApi.cases doesn’t behave like an Array any longer, it’s just a DeskApi::Resource so links like next, previous, first and last can be called directly. However you’ll have to request the entries before you can loop through all the records on the page.

cases = DeskApi.cases
cases.entries.each do |my_case|
  # do something with the case
end

# now move on to the next page
next_page = cases.next
next_page.entries.each do |my_case|
  # do something with the case
end

# go back to the previous page
previous_page = next_page.previous

# or go to the last page
last_page = previous_page.last

# or go to the first page
first_page = last_page.first

Links

Pagination is pretty obvious but the cool part about pagination or rather resources is the auto-linking. As soon as the resource has a link defined, it’ll be navigatable:

# get the customer of the first case of the first page
customer = DeskApi.cases.entries.first.customer

# who sent the first outbound reply of the first email
user_name = DeskApi.cases.entries.select{ |my_case| 
              my_case.type == 'email'
            }.first.replies.entries.select{ |reply|
              reply.direction == 'out'
            }.first.sent_by.name

Lazy loading

Collections and resources in general are lazily loaded, meaning if you request the cases DeskApi.cases no actual request will be set off until you actually request data. Meaning only necessary requests are sent which will keep the request count low - desk.com rate limit.

DeskApi.cases.page(10).per_page(50).entries.each do |my_case|
  # in this method chain `.entries' is the first method that acutally sends a request
end

# however if you request the current page numer and the resource is not loaded
# it'll send a request
DeskApi.cases.page == 1

Side loading

APIv2 has a lot of great new features but the one I’m most excited about is side loading or embedding resources. You basically request one resource and tell the API to embed sub resources, eg. you need cases but also want to have the assigned_user - instead of requesting all cases and the assigned_user for each of those cases (30 cases = 31 API requests) you can now embed assigned_user into your cases list view (1 API request).

Of course we had to bring this awesomeness into the API wrapper as soon as possible, so here you go:

# fetch cases with their respective customers
cases = DeskApi.cases.embed(:customer)
customer = cases.first.customer

# you can use this feature in finders too
my_case = DeskApi.cases.find(1, embed: :customer)
# OR
my_case = DeskApi.cases.find(1, embed: [:customer, :assigned_user, :assigned_group, :message])

customer = my_case.customer
assigned_user = my_case.assigned_user
assigned_group = my_case.assigned_group

Create, Update and Delete

Of course we support creating, updating and deleting resources but not all resources can be deleted or updated or created, if that’s the case for the resource you’re trying to update, it’ll throw a DeskApi::Error::MethodNotAllowed error. For ease of use and because we wanted to build as less business logic into the wrapper as possible, all of the methods are defined on each DeskApi::Resource and will be sent to desk.com. However the API might respond with an error if you do things that aren’t supported.

# let's create an article
new_article = DeskApi.articles.create({
                subject: 'Some Subject',
                body: 'Some Body',
                _links: {
                  topic: DeskApi.topics.first.get_self
                }
              })

# as you can see here a `Resource' always includes a method `.get_self'
# which will return the link object to build relationships

# updating the article
updated_article = new_article.update subject: 'Updated Subject'

# deleting the article
if updated_article.delete == true
  # article has been deleted
end

# ATTENTION: Cases can not be deleted!
begin
  DeskApi.cases.first.delete
rescue DeskApi::Error::MethodNotAllowed => e
  # too bad
end

Getters & Setters

As you have seen in prior examples for each field on the resource we create a getter and setter.

customer = DeskApi.customers.find(1)

puts customer.first_name
puts customer.last_name
puts customer.title

# for updates you can either use the setter or a hash

customer.first_name = 'John'
customer.last_name = 'Doe'

updated_customer = customer.update title: 'Master of the Universe'

# users are not updatable
begin
  user = DeskApi.users.first
  user.update name: 'Not updateable'
rescue DeskApi::Error::MethodNotAllowed
  # too bad
end

API Errors

Sometimes the API is going to return errors, eg. Validation Error. In these cases we wrap the API error into a DeskApi::Error. Here are the common errors:

DeskApi::Error::BadRequest             #=> 400 Status
DeskApi::Error::Unauthorized           #=> 401 Status
DeskApi::Error::Forbidden              #=> 403 Status
DeskApi::Error::NotFound               #=> 404 Status
DeskApi::Error::MethodNotAllowed       #=> 405 Status
DeskApi::Error::NotAcceptable          #=> 406 Status
DeskApi::Error::Conflict               #=> 409 Status
DeskApi::Error::UnsupportedMediaType   #=> 415 Status
DeskApi::Error::UnprocessableEntity    #=> 422 Status
DeskApi::Error::TooManyRequests        #=> 429 Status

Please also have a look at all desk.com API errors and their respective meanings.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2013 Thomas Stachl <[email protected]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.