Inboxes

Build Status

Inboxes is a young messaging system for Rails app. It:

  • provides 3 models for developers: Discussion, Message and Speaker
  • read/unread discussions counter
  • any user can be invited to discussion by the member of this discussion, so you can chat with unlimited number of users
  • have configurable behavior via CanCan Ability

Upgrading from 0.1 to current version (0.2)

Run rails generate inboxes:upgrade_discussible and then roll up the migration. Your DB is upgraded!

Requirements and recommendations

Inboxes requires Rails 3.x and Devise for user identification (surely, messaging system is not possible without users). Now the gem is tested only with Ruby 1.8.7 and REE. We recommend to use Inboxes with Faye, because it's really sexy with it.

Remember that unfortunately, Inboxes reserve 3 resources names: Discussion, Message and Speaker.

Since version 0.2.0, it is possible to add has_inboxes option to any model. For instance, it can be Person or Teacher.

Installation

Make sure that Devise and CanCan are already installed and configured in your app!

  1. Add gem "inboxes", "~> 0.2.0" to the Gemfile and run bundle install
  2. Execute rails generate inboxes:install. This command will generate migration for messaging system. Don't forget to run migrations: rake db:migrate
  3. Add has_inboxes to your User model like here.
  4. Add CanCan abilities to manage Inboxes models:
can [:index, :create], Discussion
can :read, Discussion do |discussion|
  discussion.can_participate?(user)
end
  1. Now Inboxes are ready to use. Open http://yoursite.dev/discussions to see the list of discussions. You can start new one.

Default Inboxes views are ugly, so you can copy into your app and make anything with them: rails generate inboxes:views If you have problems with installation, you can check code of demo app

I18n

By default, the gem provides localized phrases for Russian and English languages. You can easily override any of them. Here is list of all I18n phrases.

Integration with Faye

You can watch the demo of integration on YouTube

  1. Add gem "faye" to your Gemfile and run bundle install. Install Faye by the screencast

  2. Create messaging.js in app/assets/javascripts/ with this line: //= require inboxes/faye

  3. Copy or replace 2 views from Inboxes example app to your application: app/views/inboxes/messages/_form and app/views/inboxes/messages/create

  4. Add config parameters to your application config (last 2 are not necessary):

config.inboxes.faye_enabled = true
config.inboxes.faye_host = "inboxes-app.dev" # localhost by default
config.inboxes.faye_port = 9292 # 9292 by default
  1. Faye installation is finished. If you have any troubles, check the example app

While running Inboxes with Faye, don't forget to run Faye worker it: rackup faye.ru -s thin -E production You can read more about that on it's official page.

Hints

  1. If you want to add breadcrumbs to Inboxes pages, we recommend you to use crummy gem. It allows to define breadcrumbs in views.

Todo

  • Finalize RSpec tests (are located in rspec branch)
  • Add Pusher capability
  • Email notifications and the ability to answer received emails like in Github issues (#7)

Contributors

Feel free for pull requests!