#iChat using Sinatra and Active Record

Objectives

• integrate Active Record with Sinatra
• make an http request from a script (rather than a web browser)
• use a model to access data from a database
• display data from a database in a view

Resources

• http://rubydoc.info/gems/activerecord/4.0.0/frames
• https://github.com/janko-m/sinatra-activerecord
• http://danneu.com/posts/15-a-simple-blog-with-sinatra-and-active-record-some-useful-tools/
• https://github.com/typhoeus/typhoeus
• https://github.com/cldwalker/tux

Instructions

Setup

--note: '$' means command should be run on command line --

• fork this repo git clone
• $cd repo_name
• $bundle install
• $rake db:migrate
• $shotgun
• Open up a second terminal tab and run $tux
• In the post_message.rb script modify the uri variable to match your the port your server is running on. For Example:

  == Shotgun/Thin on http://127.0.0.1:9393/
  >> Thin web server (v1.5.0 codename Knife)
  >> Maximum connections set to 1024
  >> Listening on 127.0.0.1:9393, CTRL+C to stop

• In the above example '127.0.0.1:9393' is your uri

Posting a Params hash from a ruby script

• first try posting a hash to a url Typhoeus.post(uri, :body => {:key => 'value'}) and put the debugger into your post route. Then, in the console print out "params." You can do this in your post_message.rb script like this:

  uri = "127.0.0.1:9393/"
  Typhoeus.post(uri, {key: 'value'})

• When you do, you should {key => 'value'} printed in the debugger.
• You access this is the same way that you do when using a form params[:key] #=> 'value'
• Now, using Typhoeus gem, post the sender, receiver and message variables to the post '/'

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NOTE: When doing this, keep in mind what the params hash looked like when your input came from a form, this is no different except you are directly passing the hash to the url from the ruby script.

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• Modify the post '/' route to create a message based on user input from the post_message.rb script

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HINT: Thanks to active record magic, you don't have to assign them all individually. Take a look at the create method

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• Modify the get '/reset' route to delete all messages in the database.
• At this point, in another terminal tab you should be able to run the post_message.rb script and it should successfully post to the server.
• You will know it works by going into the 'tux' terminal and typing Message.all. You should see the message that you sent.
• Now, modify the messages view to display all of the messages in the database.
• Your resulting view should look something like this: