Simple Private Messages

This plugin provides basic private messaging functionality between the users of a site. It’s not big on features but the idea is that it’s nice and simple and light on resources.

It’s not bound to specific model names and plays nice with will_paginate.

Setup

First create the private message model by running the private_message_model generator, passing two parameters - the name you want to use for the Message model and the name of the User model.

For all examples in the readme, we will use Message and User.

  ./script/generate private_message_model Message User

Now add the following entry to the model which will have the messages

  has_private_messages

If you have used anything other than "Message", you will have to pass the correct class name along as :class_name.

That’s it.

Usage

Examples assume you’re using Restful Authentication or AAA, with a user model of User and message model of Message.

Creating / sending a message:

  frank = User.find_by_login("frank")
  george = User.find_by_login("george")

  message = Message.new
  message.subject = "Happy Festivus, son"
  message.body = "It's time for the Feats of Strength."
  message.sender = frank
  message.recipient = george
  message.save

Reading a message

  message = Message.read(id, user)

Returns the message of the chosen id and ensures the passed user is either the sender or the recipient. If unread, it checks to see if the passed user is the recipient and if so marks the read_at timestamp.

You can also check if a message has been read with the following:

  message.read?

Retrieving a user’s received mail

  newman = User.find_by_login("newman")
  newman.received_messages

The following will return Newman’s number of unread messages:

  newman.unread_message_count

Or the following for true or false on whether there are unread messages:

  newman.unread_messages?

Retrieving a user’s sent mail

  newman = User.find_by_login("newman")
  newman.sent_messages

Custom finds

  newman.sent_messages.find(:all,
                          :conditions => ["read_at < ?", 2.days.ago],
                          :limit => 20,
                          :order => "created_at ASC")

Deleting a message

  newman = User.find_by_login("newman")
  message = newman.received_messages.find(3)
  message.mark_deleted(newman)

This will look at a message and mark it read by the sender or recipient, based on whichever Newman is. It now will no longer appear in Newman’s messages.

  kramer = User.find_by_login("kramer")
  message = kramer.sent_messages.find(3)
  message.mark_deleted

Now that both sender and recipient have marked the message deleted, it gets destroyed. Should a message be sent to oneself, it will be deleted in one step due to the sender and recipient being the same.

Scaffold

A generator is included to create a basic controller and set of views.

Run the private_message_scaffold generator with the same options as before:

  ./script/generate private_message_scaffold Message User

The controller will be named with the pluralised version of the model name.

After that you need to add the resource to your routes.rb as a nested resource of the users controller, with a collection for the delete_selected action.

  map.resources :users do |users|
    users.resources :messages, :collection => { :delete_selected => :post }
  end

Then uncomment the entry at the top of the message model to establish the :to accessor.

You should now have working messaging.

Tests

Unit tests are provided for the model extensions but not for the generated scaffold. Running these requires sqlite3.

Credits

Testing functionality for creating dedicated models / loading of a custom schema taken from acts_as_taggable_on_steroids.

Bug reports / suggestions

www.professionalnerd.com / "jonYADAYADAprofessionalnerd.com".gsub(/YADAYADA/, "@")

License

Copyright © 2007 Jon Gilbraith released under the MIT license en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_License