Finch Ruby API library

The Finch Ruby library provides convenient access to the Finch REST API from any Ruby 3.0.0+ application.

It is generated with Stainless.

Documentation

Documentation for released of this gem can be found on RubyDoc.

The underlying REST API documentation can be found on developer.tryfinch.com.

Installation

To use this gem during the beta, install directly from GitHub with Bundler by adding the following to your application's Gemfile:

gem "finch-api", git: "https://github.com/Finch-API/finch-api-ruby", branch: "main"

To fetch an initial copy of the gem:

bundle install

To update the version used by your application when updates are pushed to GitHub:

bundle update finch-api

Usage

require "bundler/setup"
require "finch-api"

finch = FinchAPI::Client.new(access_token: "My Access Token")

page = finch.hris.directory.list

puts(page.id)

Pagination

List methods in the Finch API are paginated.

This library provides auto-paginating iterators with each list response, so you do not have to request successive pages manually:

page = finch.hris.directory.list

# Fetch single item from page.
directory = page.individuals[0]
puts(directory.id)

# Automatically fetches more pages as needed.
page.auto_paging_each do |directory|
  puts(directory.id)
end

Errors

When the library is unable to connect to the API, or if the API returns a non-success status code (i.e., 4xx or 5xx response), a subclass of FinchAPI::Error will be thrown:

begin
  company = finch.hris.company.retrieve
rescue FinchAPI::Error => e
  puts(e.status) # 400
end

Error codes are as followed:

Cause	Error Type
HTTP 400	BadRequestError
HTTP 401	AuthenticationError
HTTP 403	PermissionDeniedError
HTTP 404	NotFoundError
HTTP 409	ConflictError
HTTP 422	UnprocessableEntityError
HTTP 429	RateLimitError
HTTP >=500	InternalServerError
Other HTTP error	APIStatusError
Timeout	APITimeoutError
Network error	APIConnectionError

Retries

Certain errors will be automatically retried 2 times by default, with a short exponential backoff.

Connection errors (for example, due to a network connectivity problem), 408 Request Timeout, 409 Conflict, 429 Rate Limit, >=500 Internal errors, and timeouts will all be retried by default.

You can use the max_retries option to configure or disable this:

# Configure the default for all requests:
finch = FinchAPI::Client.new(
  max_retries: 0 # default is 2
)

# Or, configure per-request:
finch.hris.directory.list(request_options: {max_retries: 5})

Timeouts

By default, requests will time out after 60 seconds.

Timeouts are applied separately to the initial connection and the overall request time, so in some cases a request could wait 2*timeout seconds before it fails.

You can use the timeout option to configure or disable this:

# Configure the default for all requests:
finch = FinchAPI::Client.new(
  timeout: nil # default is 60
)

# Or, configure per-request:
finch.hris.directory.list(request_options: {timeout: 5})

Sorbet Support

This library emits an intentional warning under the tapioca toolchain. This is normal, and does not impact functionality.

This library is written with Sorbet type definitions. However, there is no runtime dependency on the sorbet-runtime.

What this means is that while you can use Sorbet to type check your code statically, and benefit from the Sorbet Language Server in your editor, there is no runtime type checking and execution overhead from Sorbet itself.

Due to limitations with the Sorbet type system, where a method otherwise can take an instance of FinchAPI::BaseModel class, you will need to use the ** splat operator to pass the arguments:

Please follow Sorbet's setup guides for best experience.

model = DirectoryListParams.new

finch.hris.directory.list(**model)

Advanced

Concurrency & Connection Pooling

The FinchAPI::Client instances are thread-safe, and should be re-used across multiple threads. By default, each Client have their own HTTP connection pool, with a maximum number of connections equal to thread count.

When the maximum number of connections has been checked out from the connection pool, the Client will wait for an in use connection to become available. The queue time for this mechanism is accounted for by the per-request timeout.

Unless otherwise specified, other classes in the SDK do not have locks protecting their underlying data structure.

Currently, FinchAPI::Client instances are only fork-safe if there are no in-flight HTTP requests.

Versioning

This package follows SemVer conventions. As the library is in initial development and has a major version of 0, APIs may change at any time.

This package considers improvements to the (non-runtime) *.rbi and *.rbs type definitions to be non-breaking changes.

Requirements

Ruby 3.0.0 or higher.