Explanation

Using Ruby on Rails and TDD (utilizing Rspec) I was asked to create an application where people can post, vote on, share and save links and comments. Then it needed to be deployed to Heroku.

Problem

In addition to the creation of the application, the following were required pieces of functionality. The ability for a user to…

• Sign up to be a member
• View all their posts, comments and favorites on their profile page.
• Perform CRUD actions on topics, posts and comments depending on their user role
• See others public topics, posts and comments.
• Favorite and up/down vote posts
• Receive email updates when there are updates to a post they favorited.

Solution

I created a Ruby on Rails application. I choose to…

• Create models for topics, posts, comments, favorites, users, voting as well as the appropriate associations between them and nesting.
• Setup validation rules for and used BCrypt for password security.
• Use a session object to persist a user’s info after they sign in.
• Create three roles guest, member and admin. Each capable of specific action and will see different views depending on role. I represented rules via an enum and used scoping to restrict who can view what.
• Set up Sendgrid as an add-on to Heroku to enable sending of emails.

Results

All user requirements were met. I tested it using test cases I created as well as manually testing it. It was successfully launched to Heroku. https://blooming-gorge-51473.herokuapp.com/

Conclusion

• There are a variety of gems available in Ruby on Rails to simplify the development of an application.
• Built in active record methods and scopes are key to writing clean code.