A Ruby on Rails social media app for open-source contributors, based off of Facebook. Features include friends, friendship requests, notifications, posts, comments, and likes.
You can find a live version of openDevBook here.
The simplest way to test the features is to log in as: email: [email protected] password: 123456
or
To test the most this app has to offer, Log in with GitHub, authentication for which is implemented using Omniauth. This will auto-fill an initial post for you using GitHub's API, typing out a description of the most recent GitHub public project you're working on!
You'll also receive an automatic friend request from the test user - Jebediah Johnson, which you can accept in the Friend Requests tab.
or
Create an account by clicking Sign Up and filling out the form, authentication for which is implemented using Devise. Just the same as a GitHub account creation, this will generate an automatic friend request you can accept.
A large accomplishment for me through the course of this project was not needing any help outside of perusing documentation. I know the value of asking for help with a context-rich question when you've been stuck for a couple of hours, but in the course of this project things really came together and I didn't need to do that even once. Every issue was resolved in a matter of hours, and I think there's a couple of reasons for this:
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Thoroughly planned, but open to change. Before I wrote any code I took a full day to plan out the entire data architecture. The model, schemas, associations - for each one thinking about how an actual user interacts with a social media website such as Facebook. That said, once every new model and feature was implemented I also took a step back and re-assessed to see if any part of the architecture needed to be changed - for example realising the value in utilizing polymorphic associations and adjusting my plan accordingly.
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System tested. I created my system tests prior to writing the code, and wrote features which would guarantee every part of the system worked seamlessly together.
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Having familiarity with every tool at the disposal. When starting out with Rails and even after a couple of projects, the amount of tools and concepts can be intimidating. The messages your terminal is sending every time a page loads, how to use
rails console, how when and where todebug, which gems to use, how to plan and implement a project. After half a dozen projects or so a lot of these concepts and their utility becomes second nature, and there's no way around becoming more independent of a developer than continuous practice and constant exposure to new concepts.
- Automated integration tested using RSPec and Capybara to perform tests, alongside Guard to re-run tests with every code change, and FactoryBot/Faker to generate test data.
- GitHub API utilized with to request data regarding GitHub user's most recent repository, and the first sentence of that repository's readme.
- Performance improved by resolving N+1 queries with eager loading. These were monitored through both the Linux terminal and with Bullet
- Behaviour driven development adhered to from beginning to end by planning data architecture (models, associations, schemas) around the user's actions and keeping user experience in mind with every added feature.
- Styling performed with the Tailwind CSS framework to reduce cycle time. Tailwind was effortless to pick up and use having already acquired a solid understanding of the CSS concepts it utilizes.
- PostgreSQL used exclusively from development to production over previously used SQLite to perform more complex queries
- DDOS protection
This project solidified my comfort planning, testing, and debugging larger scale Rails applications. I didn't run into any issues which I couldn't resolve by perusing documentation, conducting research, or debugging my way through the MVC structure or interacting with the rails console. I believe part of this is also due to the planning I did prior to beginning the project, and another part is due to the quality of the integration tests I wrote.
All in all this project was a joy to work on, and I'm looking forward to continuing implementing features for it.
- Utilize AWS3 to host user uploaded profile pictures, facilitated through Active Storage
This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.