A problem with the RESTful ActiveResource class is that it doesn’t get any kind of schema from the server. For GET/Retrieve of CRUD, it’s not a problem. For POST/CREATE it is.

We put code like this in our ActiveResource method’s initialize:

class MyRestfulResourcet < ActiveResource::Base self.site = "http://mysite/" self.collection_name = "myrecords" self.element_name = "myrecord" Schema = [ :name, :type, :firstboot, :subscriber_id ] def self.find_single(x, options) return nil if x.nil? return nil if x.to_i < 1 super(x, options) end def initialize(attributes = {}) super(attributes) if @attributes["type"].nil? @attributes["type"] = "TheSubclass" end Schema.each { |attr| attr = attr.to_s if @attributes[attr].nil? @attributes[attr] = nil end } end end

This initializes the @attributes hash to contain the things that we need, and so appropriate attribute accessor methods will be created.

Maybe there is a better way.