One of the things I dislike most of Open Source Applications, it is that are very difficult to continue since the code and way it is built, also it does not cover components; instead of building new entire application I would like to see how to build small reusable components which could be integrated on new applications. Today, we are going to explain how to create a slik “address book”.

1) Create the rails project:

As I am a fan of mysql database, I do create projects specifically for this database with the sentence:

rails -d mysql addressbook

2) Create main objects:

The base of the addressbook is the contact object which we are going to scaffold:

script/generate scaffold contact firstname:string lastname:string lastname2:string phone_id:integer address_id:integer photo_id:integer page_url:string title:string company_id:integer email_id:integer background:text comments:text author:string

As you can see the Contact is compound by other objects such as phone, address and photo. These objects are formed by several characteristics:

• firstname
• lastname
• lastname2 – For those countries where a second last name is used
• phone_id – Each contact can have multiple phone which forms an array of values
• address_id- The address could be multiple and build on an object with an array of values
• comments – It has an auto-complete feature

3) Create authentication:

We are going to create the authentication, so only authorized users can access to the application

script/generate scaffold user userName:string firstName:string lastName:string alias:string email:string password_salt:string password_hash:string

4) Setup the database:

We open the database.yml file where we insert the password of the root user or if we have leave it blank as default we do not have to enter it. In order to look it, install a mysql administration tool. There are plenty on the Internet.

We execute the rake command to create the database

rake create:db:all

And we create the first migration

rake migrate:db

Now we have created the contact object on the database.

On next chapter, we will create the rest of the subornidates objects and we will add plugins.

De cualquier manera existe ya un plugin denominado RESTful Authenticated (versión nueva del Act_as_Authenticated) que nos ahorra mucho trabajo y que fácilmente podemos adaptar para administrar el resto del sistema de autorizaciones y autenticación.

1.Obviamente lo primero que hemos de hacer será instalar el plugin “RESTful authentication” en nuestra aplicación, se trata de un paso sencillo.

2.- Autentificación del Usuario:

“RESTful authentication” es un generador que nos va permitir crear el modelo y el controlador que va a realizar la gestión de la autentificación del usuario.

ruby script/generate authenticated user account
rake db:migrate
Si estamos utilizando RadRails, iremos a la pestaña de Generators una vez bajado e instalado el plugin, y introduciremos “authenticated” dem
‘user’ es el nombre del modelo que vamos a utilizar para guardar los datos de autentificación del usuario, además creamos el nombre del controlador que va a gestionar la autentificación en este caso vamos a llamarlo ‘account’, pero podemos llamarlo ‘cuenta’,'acceso’ o el nombre que le queramos dar.

./script/generate authenticated <usermodelname> <controllername>

./script/generate authenticated user sessions

Esto no creara un modelo ‘user’ o ‘usuario’ y un controlador que se denominara ‘account’ en que luego entraremos a para adaptarlo a nuestro intereses

./script/generate authenticated user account \–include-activation

Mediante el generador se crearan automáticamente los siguientes recursos:

exists app/models/
exists app/controllers/
exists app/controllers/
exists app/helpers/
create app/views/account
exists app/controllers/
exists app/helpers/
create app/views/users
exists test/functional/
exists test/functional/
exists test/unit/
create app/models/user.rb -
create app/controllers/account_controller.rb
create app/controllers/users_controller.rb
create lib/authenticated_system.rb
create lib/authenticated_test_helper.rb
create test/functional/account_controller_test.rb
create app/views/users/new.rhtml
create test/functional/users_controller_test.rb
create test/unit/user_test.rb
create test/fixtures/users.yml
create app/helpers/account_helper.rb
create app/helpers/users_helper.rb
create app/views/account/new.rhtml

Si se utiliza el textmate existe un bundle especifico dentro del textmate que permite la instalación de plugins.