Messaging Feature Discussion

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Just an open question: do we want our messaging system to deliver email notifications? And if so, how far do we want to take it (such as allowing replies like github does)?

Also, a quick google search turned up a few potential gems that we can use. That being said, I suspect that the data backend for a private message system that doesn't send email notifications would also be straightforward to implement, but that the front end could be a little more complicated. So I'm also wondering what other's thoughts are on rolling our own vs using a gem.

Bejoty commented 10 years ago

Ideal: I'd definitely lean toward an optional (probably turned on by default) email notification for messaging to supplement the system that's visible on-site.

Minimal: A simple two-way messaging system that allows the producer-consumer communication on-site.

It sounds like email notifications can be something implemented later without affecting other systems to any significant degree. Does your research support this?

japacible commented 10 years ago

Hmm, we should look at all of our options for messaging - built in/already made messaging system versus something we make ourselves (in which case, the proposed system should have basic architecture design done).

On email notifications - these are nice to have but not mandatory for the release, I think. Do you mind linking to the gems you've found so we can think about those?

kcorman commented 10 years ago

That's likely the case. That being said, it may affect which overall path we choose for development. If we are doing email notifications, it might be worthwhile to find a gem that has that functionality so that we don't have to code that in later. By contrast, if we were not going to do email notifications, it would probably be less time consuming to just code it ourselves. I agree that email notifications could be very valuable, so I'm personally learning towards a gem.

japacible commented 10 years ago

I see! Good points to bring up.

We should try to find a gem that has the functionality to start with. If it's all built in and nicely packaged for us, then voila! Otherwise, perhaps the messages team/sub-team can do more thorough research, make a decision, and pitch it to the rest of the team. Thoughts?

kcorman commented 10 years ago

I agree with that. Here's a few gems that we can look into:

https://github.com/ging/mailboxer
https://github.com/jongilbraith/simple-private-messages
https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/projects/social_stream <-- Probably way too broad for what we want to do, but does include messaging

japacible commented 10 years ago

Great! Starting to look into these now.

From mailboxer, I found this rails-messaging, which could be useful.

https://github.com/frodefi/rails-messaging

kcorman commented 10 years ago

@japacible Are you able to tell if you can use rails-messaging without using the 'devise' gem for User authentication? After reading through the readme, I'm a little suspicious that it might depend on that, but I'm not totally sure. It looks like it supports the features that we want, otherwise!

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Actually, I jumped the gun on that. It looks like rails-messaging could potentially be a front-end to mailboxer, and mailboxer looks like a backend that would fit almost perfectly in our project. What do you think?

japacible commented 10 years ago

I think it would work nicely! I will look into this more tonight - trying to finish up some 312 stuff :\

kcorman commented 10 years ago

One does not simply finish up 312 stuff. XD

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 7:57 PM, Jennifer Apacible <notifications@github.com

wrote:

I think it would work nicely! I will look into this more tonight - trying to finish up some 312 stuff :\

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28642028 .

japacible commented 10 years ago

312 half slain, looking at this now! I'll update use cases as I go.

japacible commented 10 years ago

@kcorman , can you find an example of an app that uses rails-messaging/mailboxer? I'm trying to see if we can find anything that uses it (UI/code examples). Otherwise, I think taking the plunge and creating a branch for this right away is the right direction to go! That way, we can pivot and make adjustments if needed.

japacible commented 10 years ago

Heads up - just tried to add these two gems and I run into this issue.

Time to check out the other messaging gems!

japacible commented 10 years ago

@kcorman , I'm trying out simple-private-messages right now. I'm not particularly sure if I'm setting up the user.rb correctly here, and doing some google searches don't help me a ton. Is there something else db-related that I should set up? ft_messaging branch

@jbrodhacker might know the answer to this as well.

rsz_screenshot_from_2013-11-17_150502

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Okey dokey, I'll take a look at it. Thanks for trying this out!

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 3:06 PM, Jennifer Apacible <notifications@github.com

wrote:

@kcorman https://github.com/kcorman , I'm trying out simple-private-messages right now. I'm not particularly sure if I'm setting up the user.rb correctly here, and doing some google searches don't help me a ton. Is there something else db-related that I should set up? ft_messaging branch https://github.com/japacible/commission-me/tree/ft_messaging

@jbrodhacker https://github.com/jbrodhacker might know the answer to this as well.

[image: rsz_screenshot_from_2013-11-17_150502]https://f.cloud.github.com/assets/1134321/1559630/d6b6c960-4fdc-11e3-8dfb-2a44973f4a56.png

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28667041 .

japacible commented 10 years ago

Thanks! Let me know what the issue is so I can resolve it next time I run into something like it. :)

kcorman commented 10 years ago

All I can tell you right now is that it's not trivial; it looks like you did everything just like the readme said to, but I'm getting the error as well. I'll look at it a bit more and let you know what I find.

kcorman commented 10 years ago

@japacible Okay so I looked around a bit and frankly I don't know what the problem is. Those statements are essentially method calls, but, as it says, the method isn't defined. The gem should be defining the method but it's not. So my conclusion is that this gem isn't rails 4 compatible because on their Readme it says: "Now Rails 3 compatible!" I have rolled back the database, but feel free to run the migrations again if you want to tinker around with it more. The reason I gave up is because I tried to run some simple-private-messaging stuff straight from the console and that wasn't working either.

japacible commented 10 years ago

Blah, okay. I'll probably tinker with it more, but we should try to find other gems that are rails 4 compatible. I'll update here if I find anything. I'm also going to ask some friends who uses rails religiously if they know anything that exists we can use.

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Hey did you happen to check if mailboxer works without rails-messaging? If not, I will look into this before searching for other gems.

japacible commented 10 years ago

Yup, I was having issues with both mailboxer+rails-messaging and mailboxer alone.

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Ah, bummer! I guess a lot of gems just aren't ready for rails 4 yet

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 4:37 PM, Jennifer Apacible <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Yup, I was having issues with both mailboxer+rails-messaging and mailboxer alone.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28668933 .

kcorman commented 10 years ago

I decided to look into mailboxer a little bit more. It appears that it might actually work. I'll keep you posted though, and feel free to investigate alternatives.

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Okay, so here's my opinion based on what little I have observed thus far (I'm gonna call it a night soon)

Pros

It works :) I was able to send a message using the console from user(1) to user(2), and I verified that user(2) received it
It appears to include all of the functionality that we want such as inbox, sentbox, trash
It supports email notifications
It supports conversations (similar to gmail, I think)

Cons

It's behind the scenes magic. It doesn't actually generate any code (such as message models, for example)
It's based around stuff that lives soley in the database with no model to back it up (would make customization difficult

japacible commented 10 years ago

Whoa, nice! I was getting the same issues as with rails-messenger earlier. :(

Did you do anything besides what was documented in the README to set it up?

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Yeah there was a small change. I had to go commission-me/config/environments/development.rb and add this line 'config.action_mailer.default_url_options = { :host => "localhost" }'

Considering that I'm not actually sure what that line does other than make the thing work, this might be considered another con ;)

Besides adding that line, I just did what was documented in the readme. I'm gonna go ahead and roll back the database migrations I ran earlier just in case you want to run them later.

On Sun, Nov 17, 2013 at 7:38 PM, Jennifer Apacible <notifications@github.com

wrote:

Whoa, nice! I was getting the same issues as with rails-messenger earlier. :(

Did you do anything besides what was documented in the README to set it up?

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28673568 .

kcorman commented 10 years ago

I realized there actually is some better documentation here: http://rubydoc.info/gems/mailboxer/0.11.0/frames

Here's a full fledged example with controllers and views, linked to from the above doc: https://github.com/ging/mailboxer/wiki/GUI-Example-on-a-real-application

campbl4 commented 10 years ago

One must have one's pinky extended and be in formal wear while finishing up 312 stuff?

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 8:04 PM, kcorman notifications@github.com wrote:

One does not simply finish up 312 stuff. XD

On Sat, Nov 16, 2013 at 7:57 PM, Jennifer Apacible < notifications@github.com

wrote:

I think it would work nicely! I will look into this more tonight - trying to finish up some 312 stuff :\

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub< https://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28642028>

.

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/japacible/commission-me/issues/90#issuecomment-28642102 .

japacible commented 10 years ago

@kcorman this looks great! I'm going to start mocking up the front end for our messaging feature (taking into account the mailboxer API). I'll show it tomorrow during the meeting - probably hand drawn, given the lack of mock tools I have at home.

@campbl4 I'm usually snuggled up in a blanket and a cup of tea when I battle it out with 312. :)

kcorman commented 10 years ago

Thanks for opening up new issues. I'm going to close this because we have answered the original question that was asked.

japacible / commission-me

Messaging Feature Discussion #90