Vasco is a simple UI for exploring the RESTful routes configured for your application.

To install the plugin (using Rails later than July 14, 2008):

script/plugin install git://github.com/relevance/vasco.git

If using an older version of Rails:

cd vendor/plugins
git clone git://github.com/relevance/vasco.git
rm -rf vasco/.git
cd ../..
script/console
require 'vendor/plugins/vasco/install'
exit

After installation, the plugin will create a folder in your application’s /public directory called vasco. Before you can use the UI, you have to seed it with your application’s current data. (It helps if you run rake db:fixtures:load first so that Vasco can suggest IDs for you.)

rake vasco:explore

To use the route explorer, start up your application and point your browser to:

localhost:3000/vasco

From here, you will be provided with links to all registered RESTful routes. You can perform GETs, POSTs, PUTs and DELETEs. The UI will know not only the routes, but the schema for each model in your application. If there is a standard Rails configuration linking a controller to a model, the UI will present you with a form you can use to fill out model details for POSTs and PUTs, and will even provide default IDs if you have seeded the database with fixture data already.

Here’s what’s on our upcoming feature list:

• actual support for nested routes. Currently, they appear in the list, but you can’t navigate to them.

• support for multiple MIME types. Currently, the system only uses the XML endpoints.

• fixing the remaining UI glitches (expanded URLs overrunning the edge of the left container, for example)

• switching to a faster, lighter lightbox implementation

• Log bugs and feature requests at lighthouse: relevance.lighthouseapp.com/projects/18785-vasco/overview

• Everything else is at GitHub: github.com/relevance/vasco/tree/master

(The MIT License)

Copyright © 2008 Relevance, Inc. - thinkrelevance.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the ‘Software’), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED ‘AS IS’, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.