For more details and for documentation, check out http://socrata.github.io/soda-ruby or our developer portal.

Installation

SODA is distributed as a gem, which is how it should be used in your app.

Include the gem and hashie in your Gemfile:

gem 'soda-ruby', :require => 'soda'

Important Note!

In order to access the SODA API via HTTPS, clients must now support the Server Name Indication (SNI) extension to the TLS protocol. What does this mean? It means that if you're using soda-ruby, you must use Ruby 2.0.0 or above, as that is when net/http introduced support for SNI. 2.0.0 was released in 2011, so most up-to-date platforms will be on version 2.0 or greater.

Quick Start

Create a new client. Register for an application token at http://dev.socrata.com/register.

client = SODA::Client.new({:domain => "explore.data.gov", :app_token => "CGxadgoQlgQSev4zyUh5aR5J3"})

Issue a filter query. 644b-gaut is the identifier for the dataset we want to access.

As of version 1.0.0+

The return object is the complete response object with a pre parsed body. The response.body object is an array of [Hashie::Mash].

If you are upgrading from a version < 1.0.0 The previous object returned is now the response.body object.

Prior to version 1 (<1.0.0)

The return object is an array of [Hashie::Mash] that represents the body of the response.

(https://github.com/intridea/hashie) objects:

response = client.get("644b-gaut", {"$limit" => 1, :namelast => "WINFREY", :namefirst => "OPRAH"})

 #=> [#<Hashie::Mash appt_end_date="12/3/09 23:59" appt_made_date="12/2/09 18:05" appt_start_date="12/3/09 9:30" caller_name_first="SALLY" caller_name_last="ARMBRUSTER" last_updatedby="J7" lastentrydate="12/2/09 18:05" meeting_loc="WH" meeting_room="DIP ROOM" namefirst="OPRAH" namelast="WINFREY" post="WIN" release_date=1269586800 terminal_suffix="J7" total_people="10" type_of_access="VA" uin="U60816" visitee_namefirst="SEMONTI" visitee_namelast="STEPHENS">]

You can use other simple query SoQL methods found here: http://dev.socrata.com/docs/queries.html

client = SODA::Client.new({:domain => "soda.demo.socrata.com"})
magnitude_response = client.get("4tka-6guv", {"$where" => "magnitude > '3.0'"})

#=> [#<Hashie::Mash datetime="2012-09-14T09:28:55" depth="20" earthquake_id="12258012" location=#<Hashie::Mash latitude="19.7859" longitude="-64.0849" needs_recoding=false> magnitude="3.1" number_of_stations="6" region="north of the Virgin Islands" source="pr" version="0">, #<Hashie::Mash datetime="2012-09-14T07:58:39" depth="74" earthquake_id="12258011" location=#<Hashie::Mash latitude="19.5907" longitude="-64.1723" needs_recoding=false> magnitude="3.3" number_of_stations="4" region="Virgin Islands region" source="pr" version="0">, ... ]

datetime_response = client.get("4tka-6guv", {"$where" => "datetime > '2012-09-14T09:28:55' AND datetime < '2012-12-25T09:00:00'"})

#=> [#<Hashie::Mash datetime="2012-09-14T10:10:19" depth="8.2" earthquake_id="00388609" location=#<Hashie::Mash latitude="36.9447" longitude="-117.6778" needs_recoding=false> magnitude="1.7" number_of_stations="29" region="Northern California" source="nn" version="9">, #<Hashie::Mash datetime="2012-09-14T10:06:11" depth="6.4" earthquake_id="00388607" location=#<Hashie::Mash latitude="36.9417" longitude="-117.6903" needs_recoding=false> magnitude="1.7" number_of_stations="29" region="Central California" source="nn" version="9">, ... ]

You can also provide a full URI to an API endpoint instead of specifying the ID. Just copy and paste the dataset URI from the API documentation!

client = SODA::Client.new({:domain => "soda.demo.socrata.com"})
magnitude_response = client.get("https://soda.demo.socrata.com/resource/4tka-6guv.json", {"$where" => "magnitude > '3.0'"})

All the field names have built in getter methods since the objects are Hashie::Mashes.

magnitude_response.first.number_of_stations   #=> "6"

Note that the return value is a string object.