apiify

apiify is a little gem that takes any .csv file and turns it into an API.

It's aimed at large organisations, e.g. government departments, that publish a lot of data as .csv and who want a quick way to access this data as JSON in their digital services.

Requirements

You will need to initialize a Rails API-only application with a Postgres database, by running something like the following:

$ rails new <my-api> -d=postgresql --api

Then make your database with $ bin/rake db:create.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'apiify'

And install with bundle. Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install apiify

Usage

Locate the CSV file you want to turn into an API. The name of the CSV file will become the name of the database table you will create, so ensure it is named appropriately.

Bad:

• 2017-list_of_bunnies-FINALv2.csv

Good:

• bunny.csv

In your Rails API project directory, run $ apiify new <path-to-csv> [index]. This will run an API-appropriate scaffold via rails (i.e. a model, controller, and serializer will be created; so will a migration). The optional [index] argument takes the name of a column header and indexes that column in the database.

The model's properties will be derived from the CSV column headers, so ensure they are properly named. apiify auto-detects an appropriate property type based on the contents of each column.

Bad:

• sub_cat3

Good:

• breed_category

apiify will prompt you to run $ bin/rake db:migrate. Do so.

Then run $ apiify import <path-to-csv>. This will import each row in your CSV file as a new record in your database.

Run $ bin/rails s to boot up your rails server. Visit localhost:3000/<pluralised model name> to see your data in lovely, lovely JSON format.

Run apiify help [COMMAND] to see a list of commands and get help with their usage.

Features not supported

This gem currently does not work with databases other than Postgresql.

It currently does not support updating a database table based on a CSV input - it creates a new table each time the gem is used.

Please take a look at the list of known issues before using the gem.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/oscar-barlow/apiify.

Authors

• Chris Cooper
• Jenna Ramdenee
• Keomony Khun
• Oscar Barlow

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.