Interactive Ruby Console

You can work with the GoodData Ruby SDK from your Ruby console, without writing a script. There are two methods how to do that:

IRB

IRB is an interactive console that is provided with your Ruby installation. You may use gooddata SDK inside your IRB. Below are some of the basic steps.

First, launch IRB. In your terminal, execute the following:

irb

You should receive a message similar to the following, which indicates that you are inside the interactive Ruby environment:

2.1-head :001 >

Let’s start playing with gooddata. Enter the following:

> GoodData

You should receive the following:

NameError: uninitialized constant GoodData

This error message indicates that irb does not know about the gooddata SDK. So, let’s tell irb to require the SDK:

> require 'gooddata'
  => true

OK. Now, repeat the previous command:

> GoodData
  => GoodData

The response indicates that irb knows about SDK. Let’s try to log in to the GoodData platform with your credentials through the SDK. * For clarity, the > sign is omitted in the irb session from now on.

client = GoodData.connect("john@example.com", "password")

You should be logged in. Now, you can perform tasks that do not require you to be inside of a specific project. For example, use the following to list all of your projects:

client.projects

To work with a project, you must define the project for the SDK. For example, suppose you wish to list the reports in a project. You must tell the SDK the project to review:

project = client.projects('PROJECT_ID')

To list the reports in this project:

project.reports

OK. To exit irb, enter:

exit

jack_in

To make things a bit easier than irb, Gooddata SDK includes a gooddata command line interface that was installed along with the gem. One of the commands is jack_in which brings you into a live project where you can poke and explore.

gooddata -U john@example.com -P password -p PROJECT_ID project jack_in

In a single command, the above launches the command line interface, logs you into the platform, and identifies the project to which to connect. At this point, you may begin entering commands:

reports = project.reports

NOTE: Use the ~/.gooddata file to save your username and password locally, so you do not have to type it every single time.