I needed a Ruby library to perform basic create, read, update and delete operations on Gists. I looked, I saw basically nothing (except hacky, test-less tools), and I decided to roll my own. Here’s the result.

ActiveGist is so named because it wraps GitHub’s Gist API with a class implementing the ActiveModel modules. So, it should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s ever used models in Ruby on Rails.

The obligatory installation steps…

gem install activegist

require 'activegist'

# Set up credentials. A required step, as far as I know.
ActiveGist::API.username = "gist owner's github username"
ActiveGist::API.password = "gist owner's github password"

# Various examples of creating and saving a new gist
gist = ActiveGist.new
gist.description = "gist description"
gist.files                                              #=> {}
gist.files['test.txt'] = { :content => 'file content' }
gist.save                                               #=> true or false
gist.save!                                              #=> raise an error on validation error

# gists are private by default. To make them public, pass a :public option.
gist = ActiveGist.new :public => true,
                      :description => "optional",
                      :files => { 'test.txt' => { :content => 'file content' } })
gist.save

gist = ActiveGist.create!(:files => { 'test.txt' => { :content => 'file content' } })

# Check if gist is valid
gist = ActiveGist.new
gist.valid?               #=> false
gist.errors.full_messages #=> ["Files can't be blank"] 
gist.errors[:files]       #=> ["can't be blank"]

# Find an existing gist if you know its ID
gist = ActiveGist.find id
gist.public?  #=> true if the gist is public, false otherwise
gist.files
#=>
#  {"test.txt"=>
#    {"type"=>"text/plain",
#     "content"=>"file content", 
#     "raw_url"=>"https://gist.github.com/.../test.txt",
#     "size"=>12,
#     "filename"=>"test.txt",
#     "language"=>"Text"
#    }
#  }

# Fork an existing gist. Yes, really.
gist = ActiveGist.find id
forked_gist = gist.fork

# Check if gist is already starred, then star it, then unstar it.
# (Unlike most methods, these take effect immediately!)
gist = ActiveGist.find id
gist.starred?    #=> boolean
gist.star!
gist.unstar!

# Get a whole bunch of gists.
ActiveGist.all
ActiveGist.all :public    # returns only public gists
ActiveGist.all :starred   # returns only starred gists

# Get just one gist.
ActiveGist.first
ActiveGist.last

# Count gists.
ActiveGist.count
ActiveGist.count :public
ActiveGist.count :starred

# Save changes to a gist
gist = ActiveGist.first
gist.files['test.txt'][:content] = "Updated content"
gist.changed?  #=> true
gist.save      #=> true if saved, false if validation failed
gist.save!     #=> true if saved, raise error if validation failed

# Destroy the gist, it's just a test gist anyway
gist.destroy

Released under the MIT license. Copyright © 2012, Colin MacKenzie IV