Ruby Altmetric API Client

A simple Ruby client for the Altmetric API.

Provides a basic client object for interacting with the API. Provides quick access to the JSON results or direct access to API responses.

Installation

[sudo] gem install altmetric.rb

Relies on the json, uri_template and httpclient gems.

Creating A Client

The client can be created with an API key which is required to raise usage limits and also to access the commercial parts of the API (the fetch) calls

opts = {
  :apikey => "12345",
  :user_agent => "MyCoolApp/1.0"
}

client = Altmetric::Client.new(opts)

Default User-Agent is currently altmetric-ruby-client/0.0.1

Basic Usage

require 'altmetric'

client = Altmetric::Client.new()
stats = client.doi("10.1038/news.2011.490")
#do something with the stats

There are methods on the client object that match each of the Altmetric API entry points, e.g. doi, arxiv, pmid, etc.

Read the Altmetric API documentation for notes on the structure of the responses and additional API parameters.

Rate Limiting

The client object will automatically inspect all responses and extract the HTTP headers that Altmetric uses for rate limiting.

The latest header values are automatically added as integers to the Altmetric::Client::LIMITS hash, keyed on the header name. This simplifies monitoring limits over several requests, which may use different clients.

License

This work is hereby released into the Public Domain.

To view a copy of the public domain dedication, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/publicdomain or send a letter to Creative Commons, 559 Nathan Abbott Way, Stanford, California 94305, USA.