CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubydevise
Yeddie
Yeddie

Reputation: 873

Creating a site on rails where users will be able to join groups and be able to interact with the group

I recently started creating a site where users will be able to join groups and be able to interact with the group. So far I have used devise for the users but I'm now wondering what do I use to create user profiles and even the groups profile. This is my first rails application and I just need some guidance on where to go from here? What tools will I need? What is the best way of doing this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1034

Answers (1)

Sam Coles
Sam Coles

Reputation: 4043

Rails is the only tool you need. First you'll need to create the other models in your application. From your description I see a UserProfile and a Group. Rails' generator command will stub those out for you:

$ rails generate model UserProfile
$ rails generate model Group
$ rails generate model Membership

Now you will have user_profile.rb and group.rb in your app/models directory, as well as migrations in db/migrate/create.rb. Next you'll need to tell rails what fields to create in the database by editing the migration script. You are free to include whatever you wish here, but you will at least want foreign keys to relate your data.

def CreateUserProfiles < ActiveRecord::Migration
    create_table :user_profiles do |t|
        t.belongs_to :user
        ...

and

def CreateMemberships < ActiveRecord::Migration
    create_table :memberships
        t.belongs_to :user
        t.belongs_to :group
        ...

Now you can execute your migrations to create the database tables for you:

$ rake db:migrate

And you can use ActiveRecord association class methods to define those relationships in code, so that Rails will take care of the SQL for you.

app/models/membership.rb

class Membership < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :user
    belongs_to :group
end

app/models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_one :user_profile
    has_many :memberships
    has_many :groups, :through => :memberships
    ...
end

app/models/group.rb

class Group < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :memberships
    has_many :users, :through => :memberships
end

app/models/user_profile.rb

class UserProfile < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :user
end

Now you have all the tools in place that you need to give users profiles:

UserProfile.create(:user => User.first, :attr => "value", ...)

Or to put a user in a group:

group = Group.create(:name => "Group 1")
group.users << User.first

Use tools when they save you time, but learn to use the tool on which they all depend first–Rails. Check out the Rails Guides, they are excellent.

Upvotes: 5

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