This gem adds a full-fletched trivia game to your Rails application. It only needs a (or more) model class(es) to operate on (the instances of which can be the subjects of the trivia) and an attribute of this class which is comparable.
Put the following line in your environment.rb:
config.gem "balinterdi-acts_as_trivia", :source => http://gems.github.com, :lib => "acts_as_trivia"
And then install it systemwide:
rake gems:install
Or bundled with your app:
rake gems:unpack
On Rails < 2.1 you can install it like this, too:
gem install balinterdi-acts_as_trivia --source http://gems.github.com
However, I have run into some issues this way so I recommend using the config.gem way.
Once you have the gem installed you should run the acts_as_trivia generator:
./script/generate acts_as_trivia
This will "trivialize" your application, creating migrations for the new trivia-related classes, stub out the empty controllers and generate routes for them. Use rake db:migrate to create the trivia-related classes in the database.
Now you can start adding trivia with the help of the acts_as_trivia_record generator:
./script/generate acts_as_trivia_record country area name
This generator will add an acts_as_trivia call into your Country class (acts_as_trivia :area) and create migration for the actual trivia instance (Trivia.create(:on => "country", :about => "area", :displayed => "name")). To have the new trivia available in your app, don't forget to rake db:migrate
Create the TriviaAnswers new and create actions and some simple views for them. A quick way is to use the ones provided in the rails application template. (note: I am planning to modify the template so it can be applied just to create these actions and views)
Now go to
/users/:user_id/trivias/1/trivia_answers/new
to test your knowledge!
If you want a "quick-start" course or got to like the gem so much you would like to have it in your app from start, fear not. I assembled an application template just for this task (this will work starting from Rails 2.3):
rails my_shiny_new_app -m http://gist.github.com/raw/107361/f31caad451f0cca699288700aa3d98291a259fd1/gistfile1.rb
Acts_as_trivia uses instances of the Trivia and TriviaAnswer classes to assess the knowledge of users. It only supposes that you have a User class of which the instances are the users of your application.
It tries to mingle with your application as little as possible and provide a clean interface to work with. (if you feel this is not so, please let me know) It adds a couple of helper methods you can use in your views to create a trivia answer (trivia_user_panel and trivia_dropdown) and to show the correct answer (with_each_solution_value).
Please consider this an early release and thus count on some bumps on the way. If you find one, let me know (balint@bucionrails.com).