Pull .txt file information into RESTful API URL [Ruby]

Question

So I am fairly new to Ruby and this may very well be answered elsewhere but I have searched high and low with nothing to show.

I am defining a module for a RESTful API framework and mostly things have gone well apart from trying to get a string from a .txt file into the actual API end point (before parameters)

MY code is this:

require 'rest-client'

module Delete

  def delete

    file = File.open("ST.txt", "r")
    sT = file.read,

    file = File.open("cR.txt","r")
    cR = file.read
    begin

      return RestClient.post({'https://testing.ixaris.com/paymentpartner/virtualcards/{cR}/delete'}, 
            { },
            {:A => sT,})
    rescue => e
      return e.response
    end

  end
end

The the first "ST.txt" into the "A parameter" works fine but I can't seem to get the "cR" string into the "{cR}" part of the end point.

Any help would be hugely appreciated!

Answer 1

I'm not quite sure which line the thing is on so I'm going to try for both.

For only one line files (with a guarantee it's only one line):

cr = File.read('cR.txt')

Which converts the entire content of the file into a string which is fine as there is only one line.

For multiline files you might want to try:

cr =
File.open('cR.txt', 'r') do |f|
  break unless f.each_line do |line|
    break if line =~ /\d*/ # regex for matching any numbers or whatever you want to use to match with like ==,>,<,>=,<=,!=
  end
end

Also, note that ruby implicitly returns from everything so unless you need to return explicitly from the middle of a method i.e. an if statement, you don't need to add return to everything.

Also, if you do a file.read, make sure to file.close when you're done with it, otherwise it won't be cleaned up till the garbage-collector runs and that could waste system resources; which is the advantage of doing a open file with a block as it automatically closes the file when the block is done.