When diving into my Rails portfolio project, I was determined to go deeper and further with my code, and thus, my app, than I had in previous projects – or labs. Months of learning how SQL, ActiveRecord, Sinatra, and Rails build off of each other and/or work together gave me the confidence to venture into some new territory. But of course, that didn’t come without some speed bumps.
I decided to build a hotel reservations app: Users could view available rooms and reserve them, and hotel managers, as admins, could peruse existing reservations and add rooms. Below are just a few of the new functionalities I decided to incorporate.
User authentication
My first hurdle came when trying to allow users to log in via Facebook – or log in using custom authentication. I had worked with OmniAuth in Flatiron labs, so I knew how to set up the Facebook side of things, and I had a lot of practice in labs building custom user authentications. The problem was how to combine the two in the SessionsController.
I knew that if a non-Facebook user logged in, the session id could be set by finding the User via the email address found in params.
class SessionsController < ApplicationController
def create
...
else
@user = User.find_by(email: params[:user][:email])
if @user && @user.authenticate(params[:user][:password])
session[:user_id] = @user.id
redirect_to user_path(@user)
else
redirect_to signin_path
end
end
...
end
But if a user logged in from Facebook, a User would have to be found or created based on the :uid sent by Facebook. Plus, there would be no :phone_number, :password, or :password_confirmation params sent through, which I had required via User validations. My solution was to assign a dummy phone number (111-111-1111) and blank strings for the password and confirmation fields for Facebook users, thus making them valid users:
class SessionsController < ApplicationController
def create
...
elsif params[:code]
@user = User.find_or_create_by(uid: auth['uid']) do |u|
u.name = auth['info']['name']
u.email = auth['info']['email']
u.image = auth['info']['image']
u.phone_number = "111-111-1111"
u.password = " "
u.password_confirmation = " "
end
session[:user_id] = @user.id
redirect_to user_path(@user)
...
end
Uploading images
Another feature I wanted to add was the ability for admin users to upload photos – a hotel manager, who had the ability to add a room for users to book, should be able to upload an image of the room.
I relied heavily on Google to figure this one out, first going to the Rails documentation. That led me to a helpful tutorial, plus two gems, CarrierWave and MiniMagick.
CarrierWave made using form_for to upload an image easy. I added a f.file_field tag to my new room form after following the tutorial’s guide to setting up CarrierWave’s functionality.
<h1> Create a new hotel room </h1>
<p>
<%= form_for(@room) do |f| %>
<% if @room.errors.any? %>
<h2><%= pluralize(@room.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this room from being saved:</h2>
<ul>
<% @room.errors.full_messages.each do |message| %>
<li><%= message %></li>
<% end %>
</ul>
<% end %>
Room number: <%= f.text_field :room_number %><br>
Nightly cost: $<%= f.text_field :cost %><br>
Guest capacity: <%= f.text_field :capacity %><br>
Image: <%= f.file_field :image %><br>
<%= f.submit "Create hotel room" %>
<% end %>
</p>
MiniMagick allowed me to simply resize images as they were uploaded, providing thumbnails and standard sizes that could be used on the rooms index page and each room’s show page.
class ImageUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
include CarrierWave::MiniMagick
...
process resize_to_fit: [800, 800]
version :thumb do
process :resize_to_fit => [150, 150]
end
...
end
In the end, my Rails portfolio project certainly took much longer than any of my previous projects, but I’m glad I took the time to challenge myself. I can confidently say that the app I built is by far my best yet, and the fact that I taught myself while building it makes completing it that much more satisfying.