ReviewAndApprove

Add functionality in a content based app to explicitly review and approve all data changes before they are visible to end users.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'review_and_approve'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install review_and_approve

To install the database schema

$ rails g review_and_approve:install
$ bundle exec rake db:migrate

Usage

Setup

call review_and_approve in an ActiveRecord class

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  review_and_approve
  attr_accessible :field1, :field2.. #Make sure attr_accessible is defined properly
end

In your form.html.erb

  <div class="field">
    <%= f.check_box :publish %>
    <%= f.label :publish %>
  </div>

To mark existing data as published:

$ bundle exec rake review_and_approve:create_caches 
  # => Marks all records of all classes using review_and_approve as published
$ bundle exec rake review_and_approve:create_caches[Product, AnotherClass]
  # => Only mark the records for listed classes

Use Cancan or other authorization mechanism to define a custom ability to 'publish' the records Make sure your controller has access to current_ability method and it returns true or false on can? :publish, @product

In your controller and views, allow the users to set the published flag on the model when you are ready to publish

Customizations

review_and_approve :by => [:as_json, :to_json]
  # defaults to :by => [:as_json] 
  # list of methods whose output will be cached for delta comparisons

review_and_approve :field => :published 
  # Override the field used to track whether we are publishing or not.

review_and_approve :cache_key => Proc.new{|object, method_name| #Generate key string}
  # Override the way the gem creates a key for reading/writing to the cache

Showing differences from published version

Methods called published_version and current_version are defined on the model that provides access to cached methods as of the last published or current versions. For example:

  @product.published_version(:as_json)   
  # => returns the as_json hash from the last time the product was published

  @product.current_version(:as_json)
  # => returns the as_json hash for the current iteration. It is advisable to use this to avoid getting bogged down by changes to date/time and other fields because of just saving and retrieving from your cache(i.e. database)

  # Rendering the differences
  render :partial => "review_and_approve/delta", 
    :locals => {:published => @product.published_version(:as_json),
                 :current => @product.current_version(:as_json)}
  # Given two hashes (before/after), this will render the changes in a table

  #styling the differences
  Include review_and_approve/application in your application.css or
  check out delta.css in the gem and override the styles in your application

Limitations and Warnings

only certified on Rails 3.1, ruby 1.9.2
Currently depends on the application to set up attr_accessible properly, else all mass-assignment would be disabled (You should have attr_accessible set up on rails 3.x anyway)

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Run all tests to confirm they pass (bundle exec rake)
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request