instant messenger implementation for rails? - ruby-on-rails

I have searched for some time investigating several technologies to build an simple instant messaging system for a ruby on rails app. It seems very complicated as I haven't found any implementations that are cross browser or any 1-1 proof of concept at all.
Looked into:
xmpp clients ( there is Candy on github only supports group chat )
xmpp servers & Rails ( lot of hassle no good integration )
Juggernaut ( no 1-1 , not supported by Internet Explorer cause of web sockets used)
Private Pub by ryan bates ( seems to be able to do the trick but as ruby newbie with little documentation on this cannot get this figured )
Can anyone suggest me a instant messenger for rails:
that is Cross browser
has good documentation, example of implementation
Instant Messenger where User A talks to User B and User B talks to User A
I really have no idea anymore how I would implement this, anyone can give me advise on how this problem could be tackled? thx

As Eric said, there isn't one. Messaging is a very difficult thing to do.
Right now I'm using Pubnub, which is an external service. There isn't very good documentation on Rails integration, so you'll just have to try to do it yourself.
On the better documented side, there's Faye, but this is an internal process and requires two instances to be running (one to respond to Faye requests, and one to run your app). This was a little trickier (and more expensive) to do on Heroku, so I just stuck to Pubnub.
In terms of Faye documentation, check out this Railscast, and for privacy, check out Private Pub.
edit: if you think Private Pub is hard to integrate.. well, not to be mean, but perhaps you should try to learn more about Rails and Javascript before you delve into this matter, as it's not an easy thing to do (even though it seems like it should be)
edit 2: Also, for faye, this tutorial might help you out.
You might be better off using Node.js for this type of thing.

Work in progress:
full facebook clone
https://github.com/rubytastic/im
please contribute the code is to be fixed and still wacky!

Related

Rails and Websocket

So I want to be able to get a live stream of notifications for my users that are using my rails application. I heard that you are able to do this using web sockets but I haven't seen anything about it in rails.
Is there a way to do this in rails or am I able to use something else along side my application such as node.js ?
Okay I started searching for different terms and I was able to find Faye
This tutorial is great for it http://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-use-faye-as-a-real-time-push-server-in-rails--net-22600
You can also use something like PubNub http://www.pubnub.com/
They support a good amount of languages/libraries such as AngularJS. Great customer service and documentation. Also many examples such as this one: http://www.pubnub.com/developers/data-streams/twitter-stream

integrating a discourse message board with an existing rails site

I'm looking at integrating a message board for a site I'm developing in rails. The new discourse board looks interesting http://www.discourse.org/ but there isn't much information about integrating into another site either via oauth2 or sso or perhaps using a rails engine type system. Has anyone succesfully set this up with an app like this?
thx
edit t
Is there a roadmap for how this integration could take place in the future? Parts of it look really intriguing but would like some more info on how this use case could be handled.
edit 2
Since this question is getting a fair amout of traffic, I want to add this post http://meta.discourse.org/t/integrating-discourse-with-current-user-database/6669 which goes over the SSO attempts going on at discourse currently. I have also been in contact with the people at thougtbot about their implementation.
I was interested in the same issue but here's what I found on Github issues:
The easiest way to get it running would be to install Discourse
outside of your app. We do offer the full source code if you want to
integrate with your existing login system, but I imagine it would be a
fair amount of work at this point.
Right now we haven't focused much on production deployments since
we're pre-beta and want to make sure people have a super easy upgrade
system in place to stay on top of security holes.
Not done any app with Discourse, but if their site does not provide a lot of info did you browse the Git Repository https://github.com/discourse/discourse it provides plenty of information and resources links like these ones :
Discourse Developer Install Guide (Vagrant) :
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/VAGRANT.md
Developer Advanced :
https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/DEVELOPER-ADVANCED.md
Admin quick Start : https://github.com/discourse/discourse/wiki/The-Discourse-Admin-Quick-Start-Guide
Hope it can be of some help for you
Cheers

trouble using juggernaut as a rails plugin

i am developing a rails plugin, in which i want a model where server will notify updates to all the connected clients. for simplicity say, on certain event server will say 'hi there is an update' to all the clients.
i came across juggernaut plugin that uses web-sockets and have followed https://github.com/maccman/juggernaut_plugin/tree/c3e07a812341f93bb1f90c00b7a125524b07b80a
but its not working for me.
can any one help me figuring out what am i missing, simply to send an alerts to the clients.
or is there some simpler library or simpler way to get on with it?
any suggestions/comments will be appreciated.
What about Faye? Here's a Railscasts screencast
juggernaut_plugin hasn't been updated for three years. You want Juggernaut, the much more recently and recently-updated version. Try following the instructions for that.

Flex and Ruby on Rails start up

I'm new at Ruby on Rails, but already developed a start project.
Now I figure out that I have to use flash for it, and the best way as I see is Flex.
The problem is that I didn't find no start up guide how to combine these two things. Should I use RubyAMF or WebORB? or both? And will such combination will work fine on Heroku cloud?
For sum up, I'm Looking for some basic info or a short guide for combining RoR and Flex.
Well, here is a really good book on the subject: "Flexible Rails". It has a ton of good info for the combo.
For me, I have done this with a lot of success. I use RoR to develop my RESTfull service and I put the Flex app in the public folder of the Rails app. Of course, an Air app can connect to the service the same way.
I then publish the app using Heroku. The entire end-to-end story is quite solid... assuming, of course, that a Flex-based web app is what you want. I also like a HTML/Coffeescript/Backbone client that does the same thing... but that is a different story all together :)
Good luck. This is certainly a fun combo to be developing with.

Web App that uses Webcam...any Rails plugins/gems?

I;m a developer looking to make an app similar to chat roulette. I'm pretty comfortable with Ruby on Rails as my platform and would like to program it in that.
The downside is I have no idea about how to do anything using webcams.
Is there a plugin or gem for rails that integrates webcams easily?
Some quick browsing brought me to abobes site...but I haven't used it before, and though I dont mind learning new things, I'd like to get this out quickly so I'd rather stick to what I know.
What you do you use for webcams?
You would have to use a third-party plug-in to interface the webcam with the site. Rails takes care of things on the back-end (finding and connecting users) but you would need to use Flash or something similar to connect the web page with the camera.
This question is pretty old, but we've been able to use headshot gem in one of our apps.
https://github.com/diwadm/headshot

Resources