RESTful_Easy_Messages
- 16th October , 2007 by Sam in Ruby on Rails
- 39 comments
So three month ago I released my first Rails plug-in, Easy_Messages (EZM), and I was pleasantly surprised by the response, excited that people were actually using my code. Then I became paranoid as people were actually using my code! Since then I worked briefly on a project which was written with REST in mind and was forced to look into it. Up to that point I had been doing my best to not meet REST in the hallway as I was a little scared by him. I don’t know why? After watching the Peepcode screencast by Geoffrey Grosenbach, everything clicked and I realized that I could make the code for EZM much better. The end result is this plug-in. I hope you find it useful.
The code is hosted at GitHub.
Here’s how to install the plug-in. (Rails 2.1 required for git plug-ins)
./script/plugin install git://github.com/sschroed/restful_ezm.git
Here’s how to run the generator.
For standard html views: ./script/generate messages erb
For haml[1] views: ./script/generate messages haml
[1] You will need to install the haml plug-in for the views to render properly.
I’ve tried to decouple as much of the code as I could with this release. If you used Easy_Messages you’ll remember most of the code was stuck in the plug-in directory. With REZM the generator will put a controller, helper, model, tests, and a few other support files right into your project for easy access. To see the entire list view the FILELIST in plugins/restful_easy_messages. There is still a tiny bit of code in the plug-in though.
If you are using Rick Olson’s RESTful_Authentication you can get REZM up and running with minimal setup as I pulled it from a project that uses it.
First, update the user model.
Then add the REZM routes.
NOTE: Routes have been changed in the lastest release on GitHub. The User is no longer needed. This break backwards compatibility, unfortunately. Thanks to Gravis for the update.
Now run db:migrate and you should be good to go.
But what if you didn’t use restful_authentication? Having to use Acts_As_Authenticated for EZM was the biggest complaint that I heard so I made REZM with hooks for you to switch out R_A if you want. Open lib\restful_easy_messages_controller_system.rb to do so. Just replace the current_user and login_required methods with calls to similar ones in your application.
I believe that is it. Oh wait, there is also an Atom feed for the inbox!
If you wish to try out REZM I’ve set up a sample app. You can message the user “sam” if you want to test writing a mesasge.
***** Click to play with the REZM Sample App. *****
Thanks to…
**Geoffrey Grosenbach for the REST PeepCode
**Matt Beedle for writing and releasing Acts_As_Emailable which was my starting point with Easy_Message and now RESTful_easy_messages.
** Rick Olson for writing and releasing all of his plug-ins.
** Dr. Nic Williams for his multiple-openids-per-user-sample-app which I used as a starting point for the REZM sample app which I’ll put up soon.
** Ben Curtis for his OpenID sample app which Dr. Nic based his.
Lastly, please recommend me if you like RESTful_Easy_Messages.
October 16th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Also please let me know if you use REZM in a production app and I’ll put up a link to it.
October 16th, 2007 at 5:05 pm
PeepCode is by Geoffrey Grosenbach @ http://nubyonrails.com/
October 16th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
I knew I forgot something.
October 18th, 2007 at 3:12 pm
I’ve uploaded the sample app for your viewing pleasure. Thanks to Dr. Nic and Ben Curtis for the head start.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:18 pm
can this be used with multiple recipients?
October 18th, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Not right out of the box. I kept the functionality simple on purpose to let others add what they needed. However, it wouldn’t be too difficult to add.
October 18th, 2007 at 4:41 pm
I am kind of stuck on what the table structure would be I was thinking this:
messages
parent_id
title
body
sender_id
created_at
recipients
message_id
recipient_id
read_at
What do you think?
October 18th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
If you didn’t what to change the underlying schema you could just allow the form to accept multiple recipients and then have the controller to create multiple messages on send. The only downside would the sender’s outbox would fill-up, but then they would be able to see when each recipient read the message.
That’s what I’d do, but I’m lazy.
October 23rd, 2007 at 8:54 am
Also, I write this with Rails 2.0 in mind so if you are having issues with the migration you’ll need to update to a 2.0 preview release. You can do this with the command…
gem install rails –source http://gems.rubyonrails.org
Note: there are two dashes in front of source
December 4th, 2007 at 1:07 am
Hi Sam
When i go to:
http://localhost:3001/users/1/messages
I get the following error:
undefined local variable or method `inbox_user_messages_url’ for #
Please let me know what you think might be going wrong for me…
Regards,
PJ.
What should i do?
My routes
December 4th, 2007 at 6:32 pm
@PJ: Did you add in the REZM routes?
December 4th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Hi Sam, this is what i have in my routes.rb file (i added the :name_prefix part, but that hasn’t made any difference)…
map.resources :users, :member => { :enable => :put } do |user|
user.resources :messages, :name_prefix => “user_”,
:collection => {:destroy_selected => :post,
:inbox => :get,
:outbox => :get,
:trashbin => :get},
:member => {:reply => :get}
end
Many thanks…I had Easy_Messages working with acts_as_authenticated with no probs…great plug in, would love to get it working in REST mode!
PJ.
December 4th, 2007 at 7:40 pm
@PJ: Then I’m guessing you’re on an older version of Rails. What version are you running?
December 4th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
I am on Version 1.2.3. I was hoping to get things working without upgrading…?
Pj.
December 4th, 2007 at 9:15 pm
I would suggest at least 1.2.4 for REZM.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:39 pm
I updated to 1.2.5, and i also changed the names of the view files ie
from - index.html.erb
to - index.rhtml
etc…
Now it seems to be working….will play around with it a bit more and post back…thank you!
PJ.
December 11th, 2007 at 5:41 am
The older version of this plugin was great. I just installed this version for a newer project and am having issues under Rails 2.0.1.
First, I’m using restful_auth. and had to change current_user to @current_member (since my model is members instead of users). wouldn’t work without the @ like your current_user that was set. I had to go into all the habtm and change any user.* to member.*.
I’m getting The error occurred while evaluating nil.inbox_messages when going to /messages still. All routes are in, I’m not getting any exceptions on @current_member so not sure what’s up.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:29 am
Greg, I wrote REZM against the Edge that was available around 1.2.5. I have not yet had a chance to verify it against 2.0 yet but I will soon and release any fixes.
December 11th, 2007 at 5:12 pm
Ok Sam. I played around with it more this afternoon. Trashed my member models and reinstalled restful_auth with user models and still no go. Same thing happens. There’s something different in Rails 2.0/2.0.1 from 1.2.5 but I haven’t figured out what yet. If I do before you, I’ll let you know.
January 31st, 2008 at 4:23 pm
I’m sorry, but really, I don’t understand the point of having a route like /users/[user_id]/messages/inbox where user_id can be replaced by any value with the same result.
Am I missing something ??
February 1st, 2008 at 10:00 am
@Gravis - You’re right that it’s lame route. I was thinking of adding an admin area to review all of the messages. I’m working on getting REZM verified with Rail 2.X and I’ll remove the crap where I can.
February 10th, 2008 at 12:26 pm
Howdy. Cool plugin, and i’m just about to try it… however, i’ve already used the messages controller, in my forum.
If i use, say emessage, when i do the script/generate would everything be plug and play from there, do you think?
I know inside your lib/name_of_plugin.rb file there is many mentions of message or messaging or messages, but will that mess up my symbols already called messages in my forum controller? i don’t think so, but thought i’d ask. thoughts?
February 13th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
@Nerb, rightnow you can’t choose the name of the messages model. I’m working on the next version which will allow you to generate your own model name.
February 13th, 2008 at 8:36 pm
thanks sam. I was thinking, since I’m in a bind, i’d just hack act_as_emailable, similar to how you’ve done, but leverage your hard work, but leaving the controller as email (or whatever they have)?
The plugin looks great, i just wish i didn’t use the word messages already in my controller and models.
Live and learn.
April 11th, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Nice plugin. I had started working on the same thing and had it about 70% complete when a fired pointed this plugin out to me. Looks almost exactly like what I was doing already so it fit in nicely. Two things though, I have a login and an email for the user. You had the assumption that the email was the login. No big deal though. The other item was how would I move this into a parital? I was going to have a landing page for the user that had among other things, the view of their mailbox. When I moved the code into the partial though, I got undefined local variable or method `rezm_menu’. I’m new to rails so may have missed something easy. Have you tried to do something like this yet and if so could you give me a hint? Thanks again for the plugin.
April 12th, 2008 at 6:02 am
@Bill, the method ‘rezm_menu’ is in helpers/messages_helper.rb so you’ll need include that helper in the controller that calls your partial. Just put ‘include MessagessHelper’ at the top of your controller. Like so…
class MyController < ApplicationController
include MessagessHelper
# The rest of your class
#
#
end
May 8th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Hi Sam,
any news on the new routes ? It’s been a while, I hope you will continue to improve the plugin
Cheers,
Gravis
June 5th, 2008 at 9:46 am
[…] just pushed the 0.7 svn tag of the RESTful_Easy_Messages plug-in to GitHub so I can play with the cool kids. Go see it here => […]
June 26th, 2008 at 8:34 am
Helllo,
I got the latest version of restful-authentication running with Ruby on rails 2.1. When I try to open a message I get this error: (/messages/inbox)
NameError in MessagesController#index
undefined local variable or method `login_required’ for #
RAILS_ROOT: /home/ilikeyou/www
Application Trace | Framework Trace | Full Trace
lib/restful_easy_messages_controller_system.rb:15:in `rezm_login_required’
/usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails:19:in `load’
/usr/local/bin/mongrel_rails:19
Had to rename restful-authentication to restful_authentication to get it working. Some bug about the naming. It is listed on the rest_auth git webpage.
Any ideas?
June 26th, 2008 at 8:45 am
@Asbjørn Morell - the login_required method is part of restful_authentication. It iwould be in lib/authenticated_system.rb if you ran the RA generator. Have you added “include AuthenticatedSystem” in your Application controller? Otherwise, the the REZM controller won’t know about it.
June 26th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Thanks. That fixed the error. However I get a new error:
Showing messages/index.html.erb where line #3 raised:
inbox_user_messages_url failed to generate from {:controller=>”messages”, :action=>”inbox”} - you may have ambiguous routes, or you may need to supply additional parameters for this route. content_url has the following required parameters: [”users”, :user_id, “messages”, “inbox”] - are they all satisfied?
I am logged in, but there is no messages yet. Routes has been added as you instructed in your documentation. Any ideas?
June 27th, 2008 at 9:48 am
@Gravis has updated the routes for this plugin. The new code in up on GitHub.
September 15th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Hi,
I’m having similar problems to ASBJØRN MORELL. I’m using Rails 2.1 with restful authentication. I get the following Name error when I navigate to 0.0.0.0:3000/users/1/messages
undefined local variable or method `inbox_messages_url’ for #
I used the new routes as posted on GitHub. Anyone else having similar problems?
September 16th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
@HANK & @Asbjørn Morell :
If you’re using the last github version, you should not have routes like :
/users/1/messages
since you’re not supposed to read other user’s messages. This route has been replaced with /messages directly. Therefore inbox_user_messages_url is deprecated in favor of inbox_messages.
I invite you to take a look at RESTFUL_EZM_ROUTES for new routes. Please let us know if there’s a glitch in the doc.
Thanks
Philippe
September 19th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hi GRAVIS,
Thanks for the help.
I’m getting the same Name error, when I navigate to /messages. The Name error is “undefined local variable or method `inbox_messages_url’ for #”
I have always used the routes as posted on github.
Nevermind, I just figured out what’s wrong. There is a HUGE inconsistency with the docs. the routes in the README file are different from the routes in the EZM_ROUTES file.
If you guys can clean up that inconsistency, that would be a great help. Great work BTW!
December 19th, 2008 at 11:35 am
Awesome, I was able to get it up and running within an hour to our growing portal.
Thanks a lot
Muthu Arumugam
CTO
Amigle Inc
October 27th, 2009 at 3:17 am
This looks amazing. We’ll try this out!
Cheers
Rajan
September 9th, 2010 at 6:15 am
awesome stuff loved it
September 23rd, 2010 at 4:15 pm
Nice plugin. I’ve got a bit of a problem with the trashbin feature. I get an error as shown below when I click trashbin.
SQLite3::SQLException: no such column: true: SELECT * FROM “messages” WHERE (”messages”.receiver_id = 1 AND (receiver_deleted = true and receiver_purged IS NULL)) ORDER BY created_at DESC
I’ve tried reinstalling over and over but the same erroe pops up. Any idea why this is happening?
Please I need help here.