CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyruby-on-rails-3
Martin
Martin

Reputation: 11336

Preferred way to private messages modeling in Rails 3

I plan to implement a private message system between members. I'm wondering what are the preferred approaches to this.

Requirements are

  1. I should be able to retrieve them easily as something like this

    @user.conversations               #Should return User objects that I sent or received messages from (but not me)
@user.conversations.messages      #Messages from all or specific user objects.
@user.conversations.messages.unread      #Unread messages

  2. When calling @user.conversations should retrieve only the people that sent me messages or people I send messages to. current_user should be excluded.

  3. If i'm sender_id=5 and send to_id=10 then, the other person would reply as sender=10 to_id=5. This should be considered and understood as the same conversation object.

Regarding last point. I'm not sure what's the preferred approach to modeling.

It's preferred to use one Conversation model to handle all messages such as

    attr_accessible :user_id, :friend_id, :message, :read
    belongs_to :user

Or it's preferred to create a Conversation model to handle association and a Message model for messages.

I would like to see sample cases of how to implement this relationship and if there's additional method to implement.

I'm a bit lost here.

Upvotes: 7

Views: 4273

Answers (4)

Milan Jaric
Milan Jaric

Reputation: 5646

If you are using this DB model:

User id:integer ....

Message id:integer body:string

UserMessages id:integre sender_id:integer to_id:integer message_id

I guess you will need to provide :finder_sql in :has_many, something like this

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :conversations, :class_name => "UserMessage", :finder_sql =>
      'SELECT * ' +
      'FROM user_messages' +
      'WHERE sender_id = #{id} OR to_id = #{id} ' 

end

Upvotes: 2

Winfield
Winfield

Reputation: 19145

A much simpler model is to capture each Message:

class Message < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :from_user,  :class_name => 'User' # from_user_id field fk Users
  belongs_to :to_user,    :class_name => 'User' # to_user_id field fk Users
  belongs_to :thread, :class_name => 'Message'  # Reference to parent message
  has_many :replies,  :class_name => 'Message', :foreign_key => 'thread_id'

  named_scope :in_reply_to, lambda { |message| :conditions => {:thread => message}, :order => 'created_at' }
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :messages_received,  :class_name => 'Message', :foreign_key=> 'to_user_id'
  has_many :messages_sent,      :class_name => 'Message', :foreign_key=> 'from_user_id'
end

If you need to capture the message threads, any Message that's a reply can store a reference to the initial message starting the Conversation (aka Thread). For example:

first_msg   = Message.new(:to_user => bob, :from_user => sally, :body => 'Hello!')
sally_reply = first_msg.replies.build(:to_user => bob, :from_user => sally, :body => 'hi back')
bob_reply   = first_msg.replies.build(:to_user => sally, :from_user => bob, :body => 'later')

Upvotes: 13

khelll
khelll

Reputation: 24000

Were you, I would have went with IMAP instead of using the DB for such modeling.

Check this for more details.

Upvotes: 1

zetetic
zetetic

Reputation: 47548

acts_as_messageable is a bit long in the tooth, but should give you some ideas.

Upvotes: 4

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