Spamster

Simple spam filtering that works with any Ruby application and can be set up in minutes. It does not depend on any specific ORM or framework, although it includes optional Rack middleware. It uses Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'spamster'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Usage

Configuration

First you'll need to sign up for an API key from Akismet or TypePad AntiSpam. Then configure Spamster like:

Spamster.use_akismet("your-api-key", "http://yoursite.com/")

or...

Spamster.use_typepad("your-api-key", "http://yoursite.com/")

If you're building a Rack app (all Rails 3+ apps are Rack apps), then you'll probably want to use the optional Rack middleware so Spamster can automatically fill in the referrer, user_agent, and user_ip params. If you're using Rails then add the middleware like this:

Rails.application.config.middleware.use Spamster::Rack::Middleware

If you're using Rails, then a suggested location to keep the above configuration is in an initializer file.

Sanity check

First check that your key is valid:

Spamster.key_valid? # => true

Then check that it detects spam using the name viagra-test-123:

Spamster.spam?(user_ip: "222.222.222.222", user_agent: "Mozilla", comment_author: "viagra-test-123") # => true

And if you want to see the HTTP requests/responses while debugging:

Spamster.debug_output = $stderr

Model mixin

The easiest way to use Spamster is to include the mixin in your comment model:

class Comment
  attr_accessor :content, :email, :name

  include Spamster::Model
  spamster_attrs comment_author: :name, comment_author_email: :email, comment_content: :content
end

comment = Comment.new #...
comment.spamster.spam? # checks for spam
comment.spamster.spam! # reports a false negative
comment.spamster.ham!  # reports a false positive

For a full list of parameters accepted by spamster_attrs, see Akismet's documentation for comment-check.

Spamster methods

key_valid?

Checks if the key is valid using verify-key.

Spamster.key_valid?

spam?

Checks if a comment is spam using comment-check.

Spamster.spam?(user_ip: "222.222.222.222", user_agent: "Mozilla", comment_author: "viagra-test-123")

spam!

Reports a false negative using submit-spam.

Spamster.spam!(user_ip: "222.222.222.222", user_agent: "Mozilla", comment_author: "viagra-test-123")

ham!

Reports a false positive using submit-ham.

Spamster.ham!(user_ip: "222.222.222.222", user_agent: "Mozilla", comment_author: "viagra-test-123")

Contributing

Fork it, install dependencies with bundle, and run tests with bundle exec rake. If you submit a pull request, then remember to include tests.

Created by Brian Alexander and released under an MIT License.