README

=KayakSearch

Warning, this plugin is still very much a work-in-progress and worth about what you paid for it. =^)

==Usage

In your config/environment.rb:

  ENV['KAYAK_API_KEY'] ||= 'YOUR-API-KEY-HERE'


In your controller:

  def search_flights
    kayak = KayakSearch.new
    kayak.get_session
    @search_id = kayak.start_flight_search({:origin => 'ATL', ... }) #check source for more options
    more_pending = true

    while more_pending
      more_pending, @xml = kayak.poll_results(@search_id, :max_count => 100)

      # optionally do some stuff with xml, update page, etc
      # but more records are to come. Keep poling until more_pending comes back false
      # which means either there are no more results or we hit our max_count

      sleep 5 # Let kayak work some more before checking again.
    end

    # Here, xml will contain all of the flights found by kayak, up to optional max_search, ordered by price ASC
    # See below for one possible way to display the records.

  end


In your view:

  <% @xml.elements.each("/searchresult/trips/trip") do |trip| %>
    <% trip.elements.each("price") do |price| %>
      <%
        currency = price.attribute('currency').to_s
        url = price.attribute('url').to_s
      %>
      <%= link_to("$#{price}#{currency}", "http://kayak.com#{url}") %>
      <% end %>
    <% trip.elements.each("legs") do |leg| %>
      Display info about individual flight legs
    <% end %>
  <% end %>


Working with KayakSearch in development:

  Because doing kayak searches takes at least 10 to 20 seconds or more to completely finish, and so as to not waste kayak.com's resources for my testing, I've added a mechanism for working with your application in the development environment by having KayakSearch read the search results from a local file. Two environment variables are needed, KAYAK_TEST, to indicate that you don't want to hit the api server, and KAYAK_TEST_FILE, which is the path to your dummy xml file.  I've included a sample search result in test.xml which you can use.

In your config.environment.rb:
  ENV['KAYAK_TEST'] = 'true' # Disables real api calls
  ENV['KAYAK_TEST_FILE'] = 'path/to/test.xml' # path to test file.