README

=Currency Exchange Plugin v1 for Rails Version 2.1.0

This Plugin converts an amount of money from one currency to another.

You can convert from and to any of the following currencies:

EUR, USD, JPY, BGN, CZK, DKK, EEK, GBP, HUF, LTL, LVL, PLN, RON, SEK, SKK, CHF, ISK,
NOK, HRK, RUB, TRY, AUD, BRL, CAD, CNY, HKD, IDR, KRW, MXN, MYR, NZD, PHP, SGD, THB, ZAR

As you should not work with fractions when handling money, 
the converter expects you to pass it amount of money in its smallest unit.
The result will be returned as an integer.

- The plugin uses the exchange rates published by the European Bank.
- The exchange rates are updated automatically once a day on demand.

==Example

===Here the syntax:

<tt>converted_money=CurrencyExchange.currency_exchange(amount, "from_currency", "to_currency")</tt>

===Here an example:

<tt>converted_money=CurrencyExchange.currency_exchange(100, "USD", "EUR")</tt>

====If you leave out "to_currency", the currency given will be converted into "EUR"

<tt>euro_amount=CurrencyExchange.currency_exchange(100,"USD")</tt>

====Of course you can convert between any combination of currencies

<tt>converted_amount=CurrencyExchange.currency_exchange(100,"HUF","CAD")</tt>

== Installation Guide

Go to the root directory of you app and type:

<tt>ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/jasonfranklin-stokes/currencyexchange.git</tt>

after that you should make an ExchangeRate model as follows:

ruby script/generate model ExchangeRate

open the xxxxxxxxxxxxxx_create_exchange_rates.rb file in your app/db/migrate directory and edit it to look like this:


###################################################

class CreateExchangeRates < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :exchange_rates do |t|
      t.string :base_currency
      t.string :currency
      t.float :rate
      t.date :issued_on
      t.timestamps
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :exchange_rates
  end
end

###################################################

Then, from the root directory of our app, type:

<tt>rake db:migrate</tt>

From now on, you should be able to use call CurrencyExchange.currency_exchange from within your rails application.

By default the to currency is set to EUR, but is by chance you would like to change the default, you can by adding the following line to your environment.rb file.

<tt>CurrencyExchange.base_currency = 'USD'</tt>


== Documentation

All the documentation you need should be in the README file (this is what you are reading now).
You should find the documentation in the rdoc folder of the currency exchange plugin. From there you can open the index.html file in your browser.
If not, you can try running: rake rdoc from the currency exchange folder, or
rake doc:plugins from the root folder for your application.

== Plugin Tests

unit testing should pass, however, the plugin has been tested with RSpec.
So if you want to run the tests, then you will need to install into your rails app.

The RSpec tests will fail if you are not online.

See install instruction here: http://github.com/dchelimsky/rspec-rails/wikis/home
The RSpec test are run using sqlite3 and an existing test.sqlite3 database in the db folder of the application

==Some things to note

You can be online or offline using this plugin.
If you are offline while using the plugin for the first time, it will fallback on to an internal .xml file with old exchange rates.

As soon as it is online, and has the current exchange rates it will only update them once a day directly from the European Bank.

Should you go offline after that it will use the last exchange rates it received.

Copyright (c) 2008 Jason Franklin-Stokes, http://jasonsrailsblog.blogspot.com/, released under the MIT license