Easy Guide

[senorlocksmith]

Has anyone made a guide that is easy to follow. I am just wanting to learn how to implement this gem and get started with EDI parsing, generation and processing. I know this might sound absurd since I know EDI is very difficult, but I am hopeful that there might be a decent quick start guide or tutorial out there. Even if its just how to install, and get started attaching or something of the sort. Any help is much appreciated. Thank you!

[kputnam]

Hi @senorlocksmith,

No we don't have something like that yet. I would love to accept a PR from someone that comes up with one! The closest thing we have are the examples in README.md, the documents in doc/, and the example code in examples/ and notes/.

To anyone interested, there are a few topics that come up often enough we all would benefit from a quick start guide or tutorial.

• Reading documents from files
• Extracting information from documents
• Generating documents programmatically
• Writing documents to files
• Creating a new transaction set grammar
• Testing the correctness of your grammar

Some of this is documented already, but it's possibly too comprehensive and detailed to use for beginners. The information in Navigating.md, Generating.md, and Transcribing.md could be made more accessible with a getting started guide.

@senorlocksmith, if you are willing to work on it I'll be glad to offer guidance and accept your PR. This is a good idea and is long overdue.

[senorlocksmith]

@kputnam Thanks for the fast reply!

I am not a seasoned or classically trained programmer. I have been teaching myself how to program rails for a little while but following simple guides and youtube tutorials. I might be overreaching when it comes to trying to put together something of this nature, however then again I might be fit for this coming from a novice.

When reading those documents they are far from comprehensible by myself which is why I found this repo very difficult to understand.

I have made a few simple apps (local hosted) for simple data entry and using repos like Devise and the like. You tell me if I am way over my head here.

[kputnam]

Hi again @senorlocksmith,

I don't know if you'll be in over your head, but I do think you'll figure it out with enough time. I think most people have little to no experience with X12, so the terminology is a big hurdle to clear. I've done my best to remain consistent with the X12 terminology and not make up my own.

The other potentially unfamiliar aspect is the way the API works. Some ideas are borrowed from other languages like Scala and Haskell, so people familiar with those languages will have an easier time. I'm sure by now some other Ruby libraries have also borrowed some of these ideas, and in fact even the Ruby standard library has borrowed some in the years since I started this project (#tap and #flat_map and #then). But the overwhelming majority of Ruby code isn't written in that style.

If you have time, I think you would improve your skills a lot by working out how to use the library. But if you have a deadline approaching or don't have the time, it might take too long. Either way, feel free to ask questions and I'll do my best to help.