Temboo does lots more than just work with APIs. We've got a growing collection of programming utilities that will make your life much easier. In this tutorial we'll show you how to use these handy code shortcuts by working through a URL encoding example.
You might ask "why is URL encoding important?". Well, URLs can only be sent over the Internet using the ASCII character-set. Since URLs often contain non-ASCII characters, they need to be converted so they only contain valid characters. The general rule is that unsafe characters are replaced with a % followed by two hexadecimal digits. Spaces are replaced by either a plus sign (+) or with %20. You've probably seen URLs full of strange looking characters, and now you know why!
The good news is that you don't actually have to worry about the specifics. Our URL encoding utility will do all the work for you.
1 Log in to Temboo. If you don't already have an account, you can register for free.
2Make sure you've downloaded the Temboo Ruby SDK and that you've added it to your development environment as described in our Ruby getting started tutorial.
3Now let's test the Utilities > Encoding > URLEncode Choreo directly from our website.
4First, select Ruby from the drop down menu at the top of the page. Next, enter some text that you want to URL encode. It should contain illegal characters, like spaces, accents, and punctuation. Here's some text you can use:
I'm Enc0ding URL$ wITh T3mBo0
5 Click Generate Code to test the Choreo from our website, and you'll see the the URL encoded result returned by the Choreo.
6To call the URL encoding Choreo from a Ruby program, copy the generated Code from your browser directly into a .rb file and try running it there. Your code should look something like this:
require "temboo"
require "Library/Utilities"
class URLEncoder
def initialize()
# Set up your connection to Temboo.
@session = TembooSession.new("ACCOUNT_NAME",
"APP_NAME",
"APP_KEY")
end
def url_encode()
# Instantiate the Choreo, using the session instance variable
url_encode_choreo = Utilities::Encoding::URLEncode.new(@session)
# Get an InputSet object for the choreo
url_encode_inputs = url_encode_choreo.new_input_set()
# Set inputs
url_encode_inputs.set_Text("I'm Enc0ding URL$ wITh T3mBo0")
# Execute Choreo
urlEncodeResults = url_encode_choreo.execute(url_encode_inputs)
# Print resuls
puts urlEncodeResults.get_URLEncodedText()
end
end
instance = URLEncoder.new()
instance.url_encode()
7Run the code and the URL encoded version of the text will be printed in the console.
We're all finished! Now your know about Temboo's range of handy developer utilities and how to access them via our Ruby SDK. Use them work with the data that you get back from the 2000+ Choreos in our Library.
Once you've got your code up and running, you're ready to move on and do more. From monitoring your running applications, to moving your generated Temboo code to your preferred development environment and sharing it with colleagues, collaborators and friends - we've got you covered.
We're always happy to help. Just email us at support@temboo.com, and we'll answer your questions.