vLineRails Plugin

vLineRails is a plugin that allows any Rails app to act as a vLine Identity Provider. Every vLine service has at least one registered Identity Provider, which is responsible for authenticating users and providing access to their contact lists and group memberships. The Identity Provider interface is a subset of OAuth 2.0 and OpenSocial 2.5.

Learn more about vLine services at: https://vline.com/developer/

Before you begin

Before installing the plugin, you'll need to:

  1. Sign up for a vLine account at https://vline.com.

  2. Login to the Developer Console and click Create Service.

  3. Choose a name for your service.

Testing Locally

For the vLine servers to be able to make API calls to your provider, your Rails app will need to be running on a publicly accessible server. If your development server is behind a firewall, you can make it publicly accessible with Forward:

gem install forward
forward 3000

If your provider suddenly stops working, check to make sure forward is still running and your server is accessible at the forward URL.

Installation (Rails 3.0)

  1. Add the plugin to your Gemfile:

    gem 'vline-rails'

  2. Install it:

    bundle install

  3. Generate the provider by running the following command:

    rails generate vline_provider --service-id=Your-Service-Id --provider-secret=Your-Service-API-Secret

    Make note of the Client Id and Client Secret output by the command.

  4. Review the generated VlineProviderController, making any changes necessary to work with your models, authentication framework, and authorization framework.

    vim app/controllers/vline_controller.rb

Configure your Web Client

  1. Open up the vLine Developer Console and choose Service Settings.

  2. Click the Edit button and select Custom OAuth in the Authorization dropdown:

    • Add the Client Id and Client Secret from the rails generate command you previously ran.
    • Set the Provider URL to : https://your-forward-url/_vline/api/v1/
    • Set the OAuth URL to: https://your-forward-url/_vline/api/v1/oauth/

  3. Further customization of the Web Client can be done by providing custom images in the Web Client Settings.

Usage

You can now launch into your vLine Web Client from any view.

To launch to the Web Client home page:

<%= vline_launch 'Launch' %>

To launch to a particular user's chat page:

<%= vline_launch 'Launch', @userId %>

Notes

  • If you are using the Deflater gem to gzip content, make sure it comes before Rack::JSONP in the config.ru:

    require 'rack/jsonp'
use Rack::Deflater
use Rack::JSONP
require ::File.expand_path('../config/environment',  __FILE__)
run YourApp::Application

  • It's common to need to test changes before rolling them out directly to your users. We suggest creating two vLine services, one of which you can use to test out changes before rolling them out to your users (e.g., myservice and myservice-dev).