POST JSON to API using Rails and HTTParty

Question

I would like for a user within my ruby on rails app to be able to submit a ticket to my external ticket management system, squishlist.com. They have an api and instructions as follows. You need to authenticate and get a token and then submit the ticket with the token. From squishlist.

# get the token

https://api.squishlist.com/auth/?cfg=testcorp&user_key=privatekey&api_key=TEST-KEY-12345
  => {"token": "authtoken",
      "expires": "2010-06-16 13:31:56"}

# and then the ticket with the token

https://api.squishlist.com/rest/?cfg=testcorp&token=authtoken&method=squish.issue.submit&prj=demo
  POST data: {'issue_type': 1, 'subject': 'Hello, world.', 4: 'Open', 5: 10}

For testing purposes, I created a controller, route and view (page) for testing. On my controller I have the following

require 'httparty'
require 'json'

class SubmitticketController < ApplicationController

    def submit_a_ticket

        @cfg = 'xxxsupport'
        @user_key = '4787fsdbbfbfsdbhbfad5aba91129a3f1ed1b743321f7b'
        @api_key = 'MrUser411'
        @project = 'excelm-manoke'
        @url_new_string = 'https://api.squishlist.com/auth/?cfg='+@cfg+'&user_key='+@user_key+'&api_key='+@api_key
        # https://api.squishlist.com/auth/?cfg=xxxsupport&user_key=4787fsdbbfbfsdbhbfad5aba91129a3f1ed1b743321f7b&api_key=MrUser411  - this is what is created by @url_new_string
        response =  HTTParty.get(@url_new_string.to_str)  #submit the string to get the token
        @parsed_and_a_hash = JSON.parse(response)
        @token = @parsed_and_a_hash["token"]


        #make a new string with the token

        @urlstring_to_post = 'https://api.squishlist.com/rest/?cfg='+@cfg+'&token='+@token+'&method=squish.issue.submit&prj='+@project

        #submit and get a result

        @result = HTTParty.post(@urlstring_to_post.to_str, :body => {:subject => 'This is the screen name', :issue_type => 'Application Problem', :status => 'Open', :priority => 'Normal', :description => 'This is the description for the problem'})

    end

end

And then I have a page that I go to to see the result of the controllers actions and it has the following code.

<p><%= @result %></p>

I know that it is working in general because of responses I have received along the way. My json is different from the example because of fields I have defined in squishlist. Can anyone help me out on this issue?

I guess the real problem is that I can't really see what the json looks like and if it is even close to match. I really don't know much about json. Should I be using something that might be easy. Should I be using ajax to submit this. Any help is greatly appreciated. I love the community here.

Answer 1

I solved this by adding .to_json and some heading information

@result = HTTParty.post(@urlstring_to_post.to_str, 
    :body => { :subject => 'This is the screen name', 
               :issue_type => 'Application Problem', 
               :status => 'Open', 
               :priority => 'Normal', 
               :description => 'This is the description for the problem'
             }.to_json,
    :headers => { 'Content-Type' => 'application/json' } )