Tag: Ruby on Rails

Mobile App Developers Directory For Developers And Project Listing

Posted on by Jay

Many resources have revealed that the current era is the age of smart-phone industries. Consumers are looking for smart devices more than ever, and not just for the platform but because of a huge library of apps that can be installed on the device. So developing mobile applications for the devices has become the new challenge for the mobile app development industry. So companies are in continuous search for mobile app developers to build their application. But finding the right developers is not an easy task.

To get rid of this, Andolasoft has developed ‘Orangegigs’, a free mobile app developer directory, using Ruby on Rails. Objective is to meet the mobile app developers with mobile development companies. The website features simple functionalities with a fresh look and feel to the users.

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Here the companies don’t have to register to post their requirements similarly the developers can apply for a job without being a member. Companies including individual recruiters across the globe can list their mobile development projects for different mobile platforms such as iPhone, iPad, Android, Blackberry, Windows phone and PhoneGap.

Mobile app developers can easily browse through the listed companies and contact them directly based on the location and the technology platform they work. The website is also integrated with popular social media plug-ins like facebook, twitter and Google+ to share their projects to the social networking sites. It includes couple of filters for location and platform. Also this filter helps to build SEO friendly URLs which are loved by crawlers.

With these feature-rich facilities orangegigs.com evolved into the most preferred mobile app developer directory among the companies. Wanna give it a try? Go ahead and do it at www.orangegigs.com

How to Generate SEO Friendly URL in Rails 3.x

Posted on by Jay

Rails3SEO friendly URLs are more important to make a page popular & search engines to crawl.

FriendlyId is the slugging and permalink plug-in for Ruby on Rails. It allows you to create pretty URLs and work with human-friendly strings.

The URLs created by slug are very useful for SEO. It is designed for generation of URL slug and history maintenance.

Steps to create Pretty URLs:

Step#1

Include gem in your Gem file:

gem 'friendly_id'

Then run bundle install.

Step#2

Modify your model on which you want the pretty URL:

extend FriendlyId
 
friendly_id :title, use: :slugged

Step#3

Add the slug column in your migration file to add it on the table

add_column :articles, :slug, :string

Then run

rake db:migrate

Now if you create an article with Title like “This is a demo title for testing”,
it will create a SEO friendly URL like “this-is-a-demo-title-for-testing” and will
save into the articles table under slug column.

What is the Importance of Filters in Rails

Posted on by Jay

Rails

In Ruby on Rails development, filters play a vital role. They are the methods executed ‘before’, ‘after’  or  ‘around’ a controller action.

For example, one filter might check to see if the user has the credentials to access that particular controller or action.

Filters are inherited, so if you set a filter on ‘ApplicationController’, it would run on every controller in your application.

Below is an example to explain how a filter can be used to restrict a non-logged in user to access specified actions in a controller

Step#1

  • In Application controller write the following block of code according to the requirement.
def user_login_required
 if !session[:username]
 flash[:notice] = "Oops you need to login!"
 redirect_to :controller => "user_sessions", :action => "new"
 end
end

Step#2

  • Now write the before_filter block in the controller you want to restrict the not registered users. You can also restrict particular actions of a controller by writing the action name.
class UsersController < ApplicationController
 before_filter :user_login_required, :only => [:profile]
 def profile
 [Your code block goes here]
 end
end

In the above block the ‘before_filter’ restrict the not registered user to access
the profile page and redirect them to login page. We can also restrict multiple
actions by writing like this

before_filter :user_login_required, :only => [:profile,:edit]

In this case the filter is applied to only these two methods of a particular controller.

before_filter :user_login_required, :except => [:index,:show]

In this case the filter is applied to all other actions except index and show
action of a particular controller.

If you write the before_filter block in the “ApplicationController” then the
filter will be applied to all the controllers.

Planning anything on Ruby on Rails? Talk to Andolasoft’s experts to get a clearer idea.

How to implement Multiple Database(DB) Connection in Rails3

Posted on by Jay

Rails 3In some scenarios, we need data from an external database to execute in different applications. Here, we need a bridge that will connect these two different databases.

In Ruby on Rails, this can be achieved through ActiveRecord’s establish_connection().

Following are the steps to create a rails application which uses multiple databases, where the existing database and the external database will work simultaneously.

Let’s say there are two different rails applications say “myapp” and “remoteapp” where “myapp” depends upon “remoteapp” user table.

Step#1

Edit the ‘database.yml‘ file for the ‘myapp‘ project
Add a new connection for ‘remoteapp‘ as below:

# Connection name, it will be used to connect from myapp
connect_remote:
adapter: mysql2
username: user_name             # username of the remoteapp database
password: password             # password of the remoteapp database
pool: 5
database: remoteapp_db_name    # database name of the remoteapp
host: www.remoteapphost.com      # host name of the db

Step#2

In models folder create a new file called user.rb if it is not already there. Write below code to establish connection with remote app’s database.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
establish_connection("connect_remote")
end

Here use the connection name defined in the database.yml file in the establish_connection() method.
Like this you can create models to connect with remote databases.
Step#3

It will give you the flexibility for managing users’ data of remote app’s database like it is present in the myapp database.
Use the normal way to get data from the user’s table like

User.all                   #To get all the records
User.find(id)              #To get required record

Here you can also insert or update data in users table by normal way as it is
present in myapp application

#insert new record
user = User.new params[:user]
user.save
 
#update existing record
user = User.find params[:id]
user.update_attributes(params[:user])

How to create a form page in Refinery CMS app

Posted on by Jay

Refinerycms

Refinery is a powerful CMS based on Rails framework. It gives a fully generated site with admin control features. However, we can extend it to create our own customized forms like Job Inquiry, Contact Us etc… by following this tutorial. Here is the environment we have used on this tutorial.Ruby 1.9.3, Rails 3.2.8 & RefineryCMS 2.0.8

Step#1

Cd to refinerycms application

Execute the following command to get all the options & usages to create a form engine in refinery CMS

rails g refinery:form

Step#2

Execute the following command to create a form. Let’s create a Job Inquiry form

rails generate refinery:form job_inquiry name:string message:text job_type:radio brochure:checkbox qualification:select

Step#3

Run the following commands

bundle install
 
rails generate refinery:job_inquiries
 
rake db:migrate<code></code>
 
<code>rake db:seed<code>

ss

This will create a “job inquiry” engine in the “vendor/extensions” folder

Step#4
Add the “job type” and “qualification” data in the “/vendor/extensions/job_inquiries/app/models/refinery/job_inquiries/job_inquiry.rb” model. You can also add other fields as per your requirement.

module Refinery
module JobInquiries
class JobInquiry < Refinery::Core::BaseModel       self.table_name = 'refinery_job_inquiries'       attr_accessible :name, :message, :job_type, :brochure, :qualification, :position       acts_as_indexed :fields => [:name, :message]
# Add some validation here if you want to validate the user's input
# We have validated the first string field for you.
validates :name, :presence => true
JOB_TYPES = ["Freelance", "Fulltime", “Contract”]
QUALIFICATIONS = ["MCA", "MTECH", "BTECH"]
end
end
end

Step#5

Restart the rails server to get the effect

That’s it! We will have a fully functional Job Inquiry form attached in our refinery application. This will also add the following functionalities automatically.

  • Mail send feature to Admin after submitting the job inquiry form
  • Auto email respond functionality to the user after submitting the form
  • Adds Job Inquiry menu in the Admin side to manage auto email respond message, mail id change to get job inquiry
  • Adds an Inbox in the Job Inquiry Menu for Admin to manage all the forms submitted through the Job Inquiry form

SEE ALSO: Creation of a new Rails App using Refinery CMS

If you have any other tips or rules that you follow, let us know in the comments below.

How to install Devise in Rails 3.x

Posted on by Jay

ror41-150x150Devise is a flexible authentication solution for Rails based on Warden. Devise handles authentication across the entire stack. It has the following features:

  • Rack based
  • MVC based on Rails engines
  • Allows you to have multiple roles (or models/scopes) signed in at the same time
  • Modularity concept: use just what you really need

It is composed of 12 modules:

  • Database Authenticatable
  • Token Authenticatable
  • Omniauthable
  • Confirmable
  • Recoverable
  • Registerable
  • Rememberable
  • Trackable
  • Timeoutable
  • Validatable
  • Lockable

Steps to install the Devise

Step#1

Add the following gem in your Gemfile

gem 'devise'

Then run

bundle install

Step#2

To invoke the Devise in your application, run the devise generator

 rails g devise:install

The generator will install an initialize, which describes all devise’s configuration options.

Step#3

Create a model “User” using devise to handle authentication.

rails g devise User

This generator creates a few interesting things like a file, a migration and a devise_for in route.

Step#4

Run the migration

rake db:migrate

Step#5

Devise provides some helper methods to recognize a user after sign in and default route paths for “sign in”, “sign up” and “sign out”

We can modify our ‘app/views/layout/application.html.erb’ file to allow us to “sign out”, “sign in” and “sign up” by writing the following block

<div>
<% if user_signed_in? %>
Signed in as <%= current_user.email %>. Not you?
<%= link_to "Sign out", destroy_user_session_path,:method => :delete %>
<% else %>
<%= link_to "Sign up", new_user_registration_path %> or
<%= link_to "Sign in", new_user_session_path %>
<% end %>
</div>

Configuring views

Since Devise is an engine, all its views are packaged inside the devise gem.

Get all the view files for devise by running the following generate command

rails generate devise:views

You can also configure the message language, mailer from address and other things by editing the devise config files as located in following locations

devise.en.yml – config/locales
 
devise.rb – config/initializers

Now you are done to use the app with authentication!