amistad

Amistad adds friendships management into a rails 3.0 application. it supports ActiveRecord 3.0.x and Mongoid 2.0.x.

Installation

Add the following line in your Gemfile:

gem 'amistad'

Then run:

bundle install

Usage

If you are using ActiveRecord, you need to generate a friendship model. Amistad has a generator for this task :

rails generate amistad:install  

This command creates a new model called friendship in 'app/models' :

class Friendship < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Amistad::FriendshipModel
end

It also creates a new migration for the friendship model so don't forget to migrate your database :

rake db:migrate

If you are using Mongoid, you don't need a friendship model. Finally, activate amistad in your user model :

class User < ActiveRecord::Base  
  include Amistad::FriendModel
end

or :

class User
  include Mongoid::Document
  include Amistad::FriendModel
end

Friendships management

Creating friendships

To create a new friendship with another user use the method called invite() :

@john.invite @jane
@peter.invite @john
@peter.invite @jane
@victoria.invite @john

The invite() method return true if the friendship successfully created, otherwise it returns false. The friendships remain in pending state until they are approved by the user requested. To approve the friendship created above use the method called approve() :

@jane.approve @john
@john.approve @peter
@jane.approve @peter

As invite(), approve() return true if the friendship was successfuly approved or false if not.

Listing friends

There are two types of friends in amistad :

  • the friends who were invited by the user
  • the friends who invited the user

To get the friend who where invited by @john, use the invited() method :

@john.invited #=> [@jane]

To get the friends who invited @john, use the invited_by() method :

@john.invited_by #=> [@peter]

To get all the friends of @john (those he invited and those who invited him) :

@john.friends #=> [@jane, @peter]

To get the pending friendships use :

@victoria.pending_invited #=> [@john]
@john.pending_invited_by #=> [@victoria]

It is also possible to check if two users are friends :

@john.friend_with? @jane #=> true
@victoria.friend_with? @john #=> false

You can also check if a user is somehow connected to another :

@john.connected_with? @jane #=> true
@victoria.connected_with? @john #=> true

You can also check if a user was invited by anoter :

@john.invited_by? @john #=> true
@victoria.invited_by? @john #=> false

You can also check if a user invited another :

@john.invited? @jane #=> true

You can also find the friends that two users have in common :

@john.common_friends_with(@peter) #=> [@jane]

Removing friendships

The remove_friendship() method allow a user to remove its friendships :

@john.remove_friendship @jane
@john.remove_friendship @peter
@john.remove_friendship @victoria

Blocking friendships

The block() method allow a user to block a friendship with another user :

@john.invite @jane
@jane.block @john

To get the blocked users :

@jane.blocked #=> [@john]

You can also check if a user is blocked :

@jane.blocked? @john #=> true

Unblocking friendship

The unblock() method allow a user to unblock previously blocked friendship with another user :

@jane.block @john
@jane.blocked #=> [@john]

@jane.unblock @john
@jane.blocked #=> []

Testing

It is possible to test amistad by running one of the following commands from the gem directory:

rspec spec/activerecord/ # activerecord tests
rspec spec/mongoid/      # mongoid tests

Remember that amistad is only compatible with ActiveRecord 3.0.x and Mongoid 2.0.x.

You can also run rake by itself and it will run the ActiveRecord tests followed by the Mongoid tests.

Contributors

  • David Czarnecki : block friendships (and many other improvements)
  • Adrian Dulić : unblock friendships (and many other improvements)

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

  • Fork the project.
  • Make your feature addition or bug fix.
  • Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
  • Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
  • Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright © 2010 Rawane ZOSSOU. See LICENSE for details.