Side Loading

Warning: this is an experimental feature. Abuse it and lose it.

To facilitate a smaller number of requests and easier manipulation of associated data we allow "side-loading", or inclusion, of selected resources.

For example: A ZendeskAPI::Ticket is associated with ZendeskAPI::User through the requester_id field. API requests for that ticket return a structure similar to this:

"ticket": {
  "id": 1,
  "url": "http.....",
  "requester_id": 7,
  ...
}

Calling ZendeskAPI::Ticket#requester automatically fetches and loads the user referenced above (/api/v2/users/7). Using side-loading, however, the user can be partially loaded in the same request as the ticket.

With a collection:

tickets = client.tickets.include(:users)
# Or client.tickets(include: :users)
# Does *NOT* make a request to the server since it is already loaded
tickets.first.requester # => #<ZendeskAPI::User id=...>

With a single resource:

ticket = client.tickets.find(:id => 1, :include => :users)
ticket.requester # => #<ZendeskAPI::User id=...>

Currently, this feature is limited to only a few resources and their associations. They are documented on developer.zendesk.com.