README

= wadl - Ruby client for the Web Application Description Language.

== VERSION

This documentation refers to wadl version 0.2.6


== DESCRIPTION

This is a Ruby client for the Web Application Description Language. It
hides the details of HTTP communication between a web service client
and a REST or HTTP+POX web service.

We hope that WADL descriptors and client libraries will replace
one-off wrapper libraries specific to one service and one programming
language -- or at least make such wrapper libraries much easier to
write.

=== Interesting Features:

* Traversing the tree of resources is like traversing a data
  structure. Here's code to get recent posts from del.icio.us:

    WADL::Application.from_wadl(open("delicious.wadl")).v1.posts.recent.get

* Faults are custom subclasses named after the fault ID. You can catch
  specific faults.

* You can bind some parameters (such as authentication parameters or
  API keys) permanently to the WADL application, and leave others (such
  as search queries) to be bound differently for each request.

* This feature isn't in the WADL standard yet: you can define
  "header"-style parameters to be included in the HTTP request
  headers. See delicious.wadl for an example.

=== Shortcomings:

The 20060802 WADL standard is almost entirely supported. However,

* XML grammars are more or less ignored
* As are links


== LINKS

<b></b>
Homepage::      http://www.crummy.com/software/wadl.rb/
WADL::          http://wadl.dev.java.net/
Documentation:: http://rdoc.info/projects/blackwinter/wadl
Source code::   http://github.com/blackwinter/wadl


== AUTHORS

* Leonard Richardson <mailto:leonardr@segfault.org> (Original author)
* Jens Wille <mailto:jens.wille@uni-koeln.de>


== LICENSE AND COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2006-2008 Leonard Richardson
Copyright (C) 2010-2011 Jens Wille

wadl is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under
the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the
Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your
option) any later version.

wadl is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT
ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public
License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License
along with wadl. If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.