SOAP Dates and Rails

Hi all,

I’m using ruby on rails to communicate with a JADE agent server over
SOAP.

If I send over a DateTime.now it is accepted by the JADE server. As
does 5.minutes.since DateTime.now and such.

But if I pull a datetime out of a rails model and try to send that
over I get an error. How to I convert rails model’s datetime to the
whatever format DateTIme.now is producing that works perfectly.

Thanks… I could hack up the string… but i’m assuming there is some
simple way to do this…

working format (p DateTime.now):

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:42:43 -0300

rails model not working format (p @seller.deadline #where seller is a
model):

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 22:42:00 ADT -03:00

Thanks,
Aaron B.

Aaron B. wrote:

If I send over a DateTime.now it is accepted by the JADE server. As
does 5.minutes.since DateTime.now and such.

SOAP/XML has a standard datetime format that is neither of the two
you’re trying to use:

1969-07-21T02:28:00Z

Rails includes a simple way to output that format:

myTime.xmlschema

Thanks Robert,

No such luck though… Time.now.xmlschema results in the following
error:

SOAP::FaultError in SellersController#create

Error parsing element deadline. Unparseable date:
“2009-09-30T14:40:01-03:00”

The think will only take The fomat with the 6 decimals after the
seconds

And I can’t for the life of me figure out why DateTime.now and
ActiveRecord’s datetime.to_datetime which also results in a
DateTime… doesn’t end up on the other side of soap4r with the
decimal places.

if I send @seller.dealine.to_datetime over soap it fails to include
the the microseconds… but if i do this awful hack it works:
@seller.deadline.to_datetime + DateTime.now.sec_fraction

I agree the SOAP server on the other side should be able to handle a
missing a missing microseconds… but alas it does not… its the Web
Service Integration Gateway for the Java Agent Development
Environment. I’m loathe to try and hack it, but could I guess.

It just seems to me… if you got two DateTimes and you pass them over
soap… they either should both include microseconds or both not… but
it doeesn’t seem to be the case in ruby… it seems to matter where
your datetime came from… if it was a once a rails activerecord
datetime… thats had to_datetime called on it… you’re up a creek…

thanks again,
Aaron

On Sep 30, 1:22 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Final solution is as follows: @seller.deadline.to_datetime.strftime
(fmt=‘%FT%T.000’)

gross but works and is parsed correctly… I guess it silly JADE wants
exactly 3 zeros

On Sep 30, 1:22 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Or even simpler:

@seller.deadline.strftime(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)@seller.deadline.strftime
(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)

correctly formats a ActiveRecord DateTime for SOAP communication with
JADE java agent system.

Disgustingly

@seller.deadline.to_datetime + 0.000000

also works!

it results in: 2009-09-30T15:01:59.9999928474453144-03:00

which is accepted. The actual date reading on the other side appears
to be happening inside xerces I believe, in source i don’t have, which
is called by the WSIG by JADE.

So it would appear as though it simply requires some fractional digits
of any length to follow the time.

However it totally bungles that the conversion of that date… because
it is then converted into the Java date of: Sat Sep 19 20:22:48 ADT
2009

Meanwhile @seller.deadline.to_datetime + DateTime.now.sec_fraction
results in:

2009-09-30T15:02:00.871607-03:00

which ends up inside java as: Wed Sep 30 15:16:31 ADT 2009

So all fubared up.

I’m going to e-mail them because obviously their library is messed.
But I’d still like some explanation as to when and when not the soap
will include some microseconds.

thanks,
Aaron

On Sep 30, 1:22 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Aaron B. wrote:

@seller.deadline.strftime(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)@seller.deadline.strftime
(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)

By the way, I think in a case like yours I would go ahead and reopen the
Time (and possibly Date) classes and add your special formatter method
so you don’t have to keep repeating your strftime(“ugliness”) all the
time.

Then you could just to something like:
myTime.xmljade

Great Idea… had to google what you meant… here is my first go
round

require ‘date’

reopen the class

DateTime.class_eval do
def jadexml
self.strftime(fmt=‘%FT%T.000’)
end
end

p DateTime.now.jadexml

works perfectly…

now as far as rails goes… where is the appropriate place to put such
a “re-opening”

On Sep 30, 8:57 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Aaron B. wrote:

Or even simpler:

@seller.deadline.strftime(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)@seller.deadline.strftime
(fmt=’%FT%T.000’)

correctly formats a ActiveRecord DateTime for SOAP communication with
JADE java agent system.

Yep, there’s not much you can do about a mangled server-side
implementation. Believe me I’ve had to do much uglier things with some
of the integrations I’ve had to deal with. I’ll be quite happy when the
world wakes up and realizes that SOAP was a horrible idea, implemented
very poorly in nearly every case.

Super improved:

require ‘date’
require ‘rubygems’
require ‘active_record’

module RubyToJadeXML
def jadexml
self.strftime(fmt=‘%FT%T.000’)
end
end

DateTime.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

p DateTime.now.jadexml
p ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new(“Atlantic Time (Canada)”).now.jadexml

Thanks again, Now where would you recommend I put this in a Rails
app?
Aaron

On Sep 30, 8:57 pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Aaron B. wrote:

Thanks again, Now where would you recommend I put this in a Rails
app?

Rails provides a lib folder for stuff like that.

On Oct 1, 2009, at 8:28 AM, Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

end
end

DateTime.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

You don’t need class_eval to reopen a class. Just use “class
DateTime”,
same as if you were defining from scratch.

Yes, the effect is the same. EXCEPT, that if the class isn’t already
defined, then doing DateTime.class_eval will cause Rails autoloading
to be invoked or an exception to be thrown. I’ve seen this style of
using class_eval in other places and this is one of those times where
it makes perfect sense.

-Rob

app?

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]

Rob B. wrote:

On Oct 1, 2009, at 8:28 AM, Marnen Laibow-Koser wrote:

end
end

DateTime.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

You don’t need class_eval to reopen a class. Just use “class
DateTime”,
same as if you were defining from scratch.

Yes, the effect is the same. EXCEPT, that if the class isn’t already
defined, then doing DateTime.class_eval will cause Rails autoloading
to be invoked or an exception to be thrown.

Good point. But does it matter here?

I’ve seen this style of
using class_eval in other places and this is one of those times where
it makes perfect sense.

Or not. It seems to me that, since we’re extending Rails core classes
here, we know that the rest of the class will get loaded. Do we care
whether it does so before or after the module inclusion? In this case, I
think not.

-Rob

app?

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

Aaron B. wrote:

Super improved:

require ‘date’
require ‘rubygems’
require ‘active_record’

module RubyToJadeXML
def jadexml
self.strftime(fmt=‘%FT%T.000’)
end
end

DateTime.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

You don’t need class_eval to reopen a class. Just use “class DateTime”,
same as if you were defining from scratch.

ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone.class_eval do
include RubyToJadeXML
end

p DateTime.now.jadexml
p ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new(“Atlantic Time (Canada)”).now.jadexml

Thanks again, Now where would you recommend I put this in a Rails
app?
Aaron

On Sep 30, 8:57�pm, Robert W. [email protected]

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]