parndt / discuss

Messaging engine

Discuss

We have a table discuss users that will be used to populate the recipients field. We are not creating new users via recipients since the user need to exist and be logged in in order to view her messages.

If for example we have two users: Batman and Robin and Batman sends a message to Robin. What will be created are two objects:

1. A Message object where(discuss_user: Batman, sent_at: Time.zone.now)
2. A second MEssage object where(dicuss_user: Robin, received_at: Time.zone.now)

When Robin logs in, she can view this message in her inbox. The inbox view user Mailbox.new(Robin).inbox

Batman's sent messages view will use a similar query: Mailbox.new(user).outbox

If no recipients are entered, the message will be saved as draft. Messages by default are sent as draft until they are delivered

Setup

add the gem to your Gemfile.

  gem 'discuss'

get the migrations

  rake discuss:install:migrations

Api

  @mailbox = Mailbox.new(user)
  @mailbox.inbox
  @mailbox.outbox
  @mailbox.drafts
  @mailbox.trash

  @mailbox.empty_trash! # => deletes all messages that are already trashed

  @message = User.message.create(body: 'lorem ipsum', recipients: [@user1, @user2]) # => creates a draft
  @message.send! # delivers a message

  @message.trash!   # => moves the message to the trash
  @message.delete!  # => removes message from all views

  @message.reply!(body: 'awesome', subject: 'adjusted subject') # => replies to sender. only :body is really needed

  # With conversation:
  @conversation = Discuss::Conversation.new(@message, user) # => user defaults to message.owner if not passed through
  @conversation.all # => shows all the messages, owned or not by the user
  @conversation.for_user # => shows only the messages the user owns
  @conversation.trash_conversation! # => trashes messages in the conversation that the user owns

Override current user

The gem uses a current_user helper method that is usally provided with most authentication systems. If you wish to use your own class, override our current_discuss_user method to use your own class.

  class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

    private
    def current_user
      # Your own implementation
    end
  end

Running the tests

  rake db:create && rake db:migrate
  rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test
  rake test

TODO

• Views
• Markdown styling for message body
• Display conversations
• Mailers
• Config options to disbale or enable mailers
• Move message delivery and mailers to a background job
• Generator to copy views to parent project for customisation

This project rocks and uses MIT-LICENSE.