PRACTICE APP

(NetFlix clone, part of Tealeaf Academy curriculum)

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Tools and techniques drilled while building it

Front-end

• haml used for all templates
• Twitter Bootstrap 3 used
• bootstrap_form used for validation errors in forms

TDD with RSpec

• we started from inside-out approach and eventually shifted to ATDD towards the end
• used feature, model, controller and request specs to drive out functionality needed for a given user story
• shoulda-matchers used for model specs
• fabrication and faker gems used to generate fake data
• all user stories/workflows covered with feature tests using capybara
• ajax-enabled feature specs use Selenium and PhantomJS
• specs involving APIs are stubbed out with test doubles and/or VCR
• API wrapper tests use VCR
• handling of Stripe webhooks is covered with request specs
• features involving email tested with capybara-email and letter_opener
• background jobs covered with with sidekiq/testing
• extensive use of macros and shared examples to keep specs DRY, including macros for test doubles with dynamic responses

Continuous deployment pipeline with Github and CircleCI

• at the beginning of each weekly module, we created a branch off master and worked in that branch
• upon module completion, we created a pull request on Github and merged it, after TA feedback, to staging branch
• if staging deployed correctly (automatically), it was merged to master
• CircleCI was connected to Heroku and Github project accounts
• every commit was automatically tested; commits to staging and master were automatically deployed following the tests

Stripe integration

• custom Stripe form with ajax
• recurring subscription
• automatic account lock on payment failure
• 2 webhooks to handle subscription and payment failure
• wrapper object for Stripe API, covered with tests

Background jobs

• outgoing emails are handled as background jobs using sidekiq with Redis
• Unicorn server spawns sidekiq workers, avoiding the need for extra Heroku dyno for background jobs

Objects beyond MVC

• UserSignup object handles two-level verification of user info (validity of personal info and validity of payment method) to keep controller and user model skinny
• draper gem used for decorator methods

Other tools / gems

• file upload with carrierwave
• integration with AWS S3 with fog
• mini_magick used to scale user-uploaded pictures to create movie covers
• figaro to store environment vars (API keys for development and production environments)
• sentry-raven for production error monitoring