Marat's Notes

Lob.com - a great web app for the custom postcards/letters sending, but one problem - official gem has very limited features implementation. For example Templates endpoint and other things.

Btw you can use - my fork with tiny patch for the templates support.

Start using this gem - super simple, for example - little service, which takes clien list and params:

class LobService
  def self.call(clients, params)
    lob_client = Lob::Client.new(api_key: ENV['LOB_API_KEY'])

    front_html = File.open(File.join(Rails.root, 'public', 'postcards', 'postcard_front.html')).read
    back_html = File.open(File.join(Rails.root, 'public', 'postcards', 'postcard_back.html')).read
    
    clients.each do |client|
      result = lob_client.postcards.create(
        description: 'API TEST',
        to: {
          name: client.name,
          address_line1: client.address_line1,
          address_line2: client.address_line2,
          address_city: client.address_city,
          address_state: client.address_state,
          address_zip: client.address_zip,
          address_country: client.address_country,
        },
        from: {
          name: 'Api User',
          address_line1: '185 Berry Street',
          address_city: 'San Francisco',
          address_state: 'CA',
          address_zip: '94117',
          address_country: "US",
        },
        size: '6x11',
        front: front_html,
        back: back_html,
      )
    end
  end
end

And we got output JSON:

{
  "id": "psc_14c1b66f31264c34",
  "description": "API TEST",
  "metadata": {},
  "to": {
    "id": "adr_d3489cd64c791ab5",
    "description": null,
    "name": "HARRY ZHANG",
    "company": null,
    "phone": null,
    "email": null,
    "address_line1": "185 BERRY ST STE 6100",
    "address_line2": "",
    "address_city": "SAN FRANCISCO",
    "address_state": "CA",
    "address_zip": "94107-1741",
    "address_country": "UNITED STATES",
    "metadata": {},
    "date_created": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.767Z",
    "date_modified": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.767Z",
    "deleted": true,
    "object": "address"
  },
  "from": {
    "id": "adr_b8fb5acf3a2b55db",
    "description": null,
    "name": "LEORE AVIDAR",
    "company": null,
    "phone": null,
    "email": null,
    "address_line1": "185 BERRY ST STE 6100",
    "address_line2": "",
    "address_city": "SAN FRANCISCO",
    "address_state": "CA",
    "address_zip": "94107-1741",
    "address_country": "UNITED STATES",
    "metadata": {},
    "date_created": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.767Z",
    "date_modified": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.767Z",
    "deleted": true,
    "object": "address"
  },
  "url": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D",
  "front_template_id": null,
  "back_template_id": null,
  "front_template_version_id": null,
  "back_template_version_id": null,
  "carrier": "USPS",
  "tracking_events": [],
  "thumbnails": [
    {
      "small": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_small_1.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D",
      "medium": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_medium_1.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D",
      "large": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_large_1.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D"
    },
    {
      "small": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_small_2.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D",
      "medium": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_medium_2.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D",
      "large": "https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/assets.lob.com/psc_14c1b66f31264c34_thumb_large_2.png?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJVT3IPSNH662QU6A&Expires=1449430428&Signature=j%2FTzUuHJkrlbAJZGNpCm3xfxgmE%3D"
    }
  ],
  "size": "4x6",
  "mail_type": "usps_first_class",
  "expected_delivery_date": "2017-09-12",
  "date_created": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.967Z",
  "date_modified": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.967Z",
  "send_date": "2017-09-05T17:47:53.967Z",
  "object": "postcard"
}

That’s it, you have created your first Postcard via Lob.com!

Lob API