rails 4 is stable

[nurettin]

Hi, I am trying to make a rails4 branch for mad_chatter so I can use it in my brand new rails 4 project.

I first fixed the rails3 dependency in gemspec, then I got:

/home/nurettin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/gems/actionpack-4.0.0/lib/action_dispatch/routing/mapper.rb:191:in `normalize_conditions!': You should not use the `match` method in your router without specifying an HTTP method. (RuntimeError)`

Not knowing where the error originated from, I edited config/routes file and changed session destroy path:

delete 'logout' => 'sessions#destroy'

But I still get the same error. Is there something I need to fix in Faye, perhaps?

[nurettin]

I got past the error by including

gem 'faye-rails' 

in my project's Gemfile after finding out about this commit

[nurettin]

Now this line in users_controller

before_filter :require_authenticated_user, except: [:new, :create]

is redirecting me to mad_chatter's login page, which is OK. The problem is, I already have a devise User model in my project in the root namespace. When I try to login, because of this line in mad_chatter's sessions_controller#create:

if user = User.authenticate(params[:username], params[:password])

I get

NoMethodError in MadChatter::SessionsController#create
undefined method `authenticate' for #<Class:0x00000006fa25e8>

[nurettin]

I got past this problem by adding self.authenticate method to my own User model:

def self.authenticate(username, password)
  if user = find_by_email(username)
    user if user.valid_password?(password)
  end
end

I guess this is a temporary workaround for the task Allow user login to use main Rails app user accounts.

[nurettin]

Now I'm getting:

RuntimeError in MadChatter::RoomsController#index
`attr_accessible` is extracted out of Rails into a gem. Please use new recommended protection model for params(strong_parameters) or add `protected_attributes` to your Gemfile to use old one.

[nurettin]

I got past that by just adding gem 'protected_attributes' to my project for now. Normally, you would remove attr_accessible from all models and whitelist parameters at controller level like so:

params.permit(room: [:name, :title])

[nurettin]

Now I'm getting:

Mysql2::Error: Table 'myapp_development.mad_chatter_rooms' doesn't exist: SELECT `mad_chatter_rooms`.* FROM `mad_chatter_rooms`

Of course, mad_chatter migrations are not done. Not sure how to do them properly.

[nurettin]

I got past this by listing rake -T and running

rake mad_chatter:install:migrations db:migrate

[nurettin]

Now I'm getting this error when rendering mad_chatter application layout.

require_tree argument must be a directory
  (in /home/nurettin/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.0.0-p247/bundler/gems/mad_chatter-d353893e10ef/app/assets/javascripts/mad_chatter/application.js:19)

At the line

<%= javascript_include_tag "mad_chatter/application" %>

These are the require lines in application.js

//= require jquery
//= require jquery_ujs
//= require underscore
//= require backbone
//= require bootstrap
//= require ./mad_chatter
//= require_tree ../../templates/mad_chatter
//= require_tree ./models
//= require_tree ./collections
//= require_tree ./views
//= require_tree ./routers
//= require_tree .

[nurettin]

I got past this by changing the line

//= require_tree ../../templates/mad_chatter

to

// require_tree ../../templates/mad_chatter

[nurettin]

I managed to enter the lobby and create a room, but when I sent a message it said my model doesn't have username which I got past by adding

def username
  email
end

to my devise model.

[nurettin]

Now I'm getting

ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound in MadChatter::RoomsController#show
Couldn't find MadChatter::User with id=1

Which means mad_chatter is finally trying to use its own model to find the room users.

[nurettin]

I hacked around the issue saying if ::User exists, MadChatter::User is a ::User. Otherwise it is defined.

module MadChatter
  if defined?(::User)
    class User< ::User

    end
  else
    class User < ActiveRecord::Base 
    # ...

[nurettin]

Now I see a basic chat application. No refresh, no long polling, no web sockets. O_o

[andrewhavens]

Hello @nurettin! Thanks for working through some of these issues. I haven't had a chance to try it out with Rails 4 so I'm not surprised there may be some issues. This version of Mad Chatter (Rails engine) is very much a work in progress and there may be some major areas that still need implementing.

Some thoughts on your work so far:

• The faye-rails gem is very different than the faye gem. Although, using faye-rails may be a good way to go.
• I forgot to add "copy and run the migrations" to the readme. Thanks for noticing that. =]
• Many of the changes are specific to things that have changed in Rails 4. It's a good thing you've made a rails4 branch because we should keep backwards compatibility with Rails 3.
• I would be more interested in updating master to add the strong_parameters gem since it's the new default in Rails 4, rather than adding protected_attributes which is the older approach.
• Not sure why it's failing to require the Backbone templates directory. Maybe because there aren't any templates yet.
• The ability to use your own authentication hasn't been implemented yet. I included some basic authentication so I could try it out (since the previous implementation did not have authentication at all). I would prefer that the developer configure the User model class in an initializer, rather than subclassing an existing User model, or specifying a controller method like current_user in order to determine if the user has been authenticated. The MadChatter::User (or mad_chatter_users table rather) would still be used to keep track of Mad Chatter specific user information like display name or basic preferences, so it would store a reference to the original ::User id field. You would also be able to configure the routes to send users in order to authenticate or create accounts. Not sure if you have any interest in implementing something like this...
• Since this is a rewrite of the original Mad Chatter, I haven't actually gotten around to reimplementing the websocket/long-polling yet (sorry!). That is the next thing on my list to implement. So I might try out faye-rails to see if it works well enough for the implementation that I had in mind.

If there are any areas that you'd like to work on, let me know and I'll leave those to you.

Thanks! Andrew

[andrewhavens]

@nurettin I wanted to let you know that I made a lot of big updates, and added support for Rails 4. I switched from using Faye to simply implementing Server Sent Events because there is better browser and server support for SSE and it's easier to implement. The performance will be just as good as Web Sockets. I still need to implement the User authentication, but I have created a separate issue to track the progress on that.

[wanbok]

This issue is still alive.

[wanbok]

I hacked around the issue having one more session when it has devise session.

delete this code :

def current_user
  if id = session[:user_id]
    User.find(id)
  end
end

and edit this code

def require_authenticated_user
  unless current_user.present?
    redirect_to mad_chatter.auth_login_path
  end
end

to

def require_authenticated_user
  unless user_signed_in?
    redirect_to mad_chatter.auth_login_path
  end
end

[wanbok]

When i send a message, i got an error that Redis::CannotConnectError in MadChatter::MessagesController#create

I got past this problem.

delete $redis.publish "madchatter:rooms:#{current_room.id}", @message.to_json at message_controller.rb:45

or

install redis. but it seems to be unnecessary

[andrewhavens]

@wanbok Regarding devise, let's move this to a separate issue. Regarding Redis, yes, you will need to have Redis installed. It will be a requirement. I should mention this in the readme.