I want to create a tagging system like seen here on Stack Overflow or on Quora. It'll be its own model, and I'm planning on using this autocomplete plugin to help users find tags. I have a couple of questions:
I want tags to be entirely user-generated. If a user inputs a new tag by typing it and pressing an "Add" button, then that tag is added to the db, but if a user types in an existing tag, then it uses that one. I'm thinking of using code like this:
def create
#video.tags = find_or_create_by_name(#video.tags.name)
end
Am I on the right track?
I'd like to implement something like on Stack Overflow or Quora such that when you click a tag from the suggested list or click an "Add" button, that tag gets added right above the text field with ajax. How would I go about implementing something like that?
I know this is kind of an open-ended question. I'm not really looking for the exact code as much as a general nudge in the right direction. Of course, code examples wouldn't hurt :)
Note I am NOT asking for help on how to set up the jQuery autocomplete plugin... I know how to do that. Rather, it seems like I'll have to modify the code in the plugin so that instead of the tags being added inside the text field, they are added above the text field. I'd appreciate any direction with this.
mbleigh's acts_as_taggable_on gem is a feature-complete solution that you should definitely look into a little more closely. The implementation is rock-solid and flexible to use. However, it is mostly concerned with attaching tags to objects, retrieving tags on objects, and searching for tagged items. This is all backend server stuff.
Most of the functionality you are looking to change (based on your comments) is actually related more to your front-end UI implementation, and the gem doesn't really do much for you there. I'll take your requests one-by-one.
If user inputs a new tag, that tag
gets added, if user inputs an
existing tag, the existing tag gets
used. acts_as_taggable_on does this.
Click a tag from suggested list to
add that tag. This is an
implementation issue - on the
back-end you'll need to collect the
suggested list of tags, then display
those in your presentation as links
to your processing function.
Autocomplete as user enters
potential tag. You'll use the jQuery
autocomplete plugin against a list
of items pulled off the tags table.
With additional jQuery, you can
capture when they've selected one of
the options, or completed entering
their new tag, and then call the
processing function.
Restrict users to entering only one
tag. This will be your UI
implementation - once they've
entered or selected a tag, you
process it. If they enter two words
separated by a comma, then before or
during processing you have to either
treat it as one tag, or take only
the text up to the first comma and
discard the rest.
When you process the addition of a
tag, you will have to do two things.
First, you'll need to handle the UI
display changes to reflect that a
tag has been entered/chosen. This
includes placing the tag in the
"seleted" area, removing it from the
"available" display, updating any
counters, etc. Second, you'll need
to send a request to the server to
actually add the tag to the object
and persist that fact to the
database (where the taggable gem will take over for you). You can either do this via
an individual AJAX request per tag,
or you can handle it when you submit
the form. If the latter, you'll need
a var to keep the running list of
tags that have been added/removed
and you'll need code to handle
adding/removing values to that var.
For an example of saving tags while editing but not sending to server/db until saving a form, you might take a look at the tagging functionality on Tumblr's new post page. You can add/remove tags at will while creating the post, but none of it goes to the database until you click save.
As you can see, most of this is on you to determine and code, but has very little to do with the backend part. The gem will take care of that for you quite nicely.
I hope this helps get you moving in the right direction.
The more I try to force the acts-as-taggable-on gem to work the more I think these are fundamentally different types of problems. Specifically because of aliases. The gem considers each tag to be its own special snowflake, making it difficult to create synonyms. In some cases it doesn't go far enough, if you want the Tag to have a description you'd need to edit the given migrations (which isn't hard to do).
Here's what I'm considering implementing, given the trouble I've had implementing via the gem. Let's assume you want to create a tagging system for Technologies.
Consider the following psuedo code, I haven't yet tested it.
rails g model Tech usage_count::integer description:text icon_url:string etc. Run the migration. Note the
Now in the controller you will need to increment usage_count each time something happens, the user submits a new question tagged with given text.
rails g model Name::Tech belongs_to:Tech name:string
Name::Tech model
belongs_to :tech
end
Then you could search via something like:
search = Name::Tech.where("name LIKE :prefix", prefix: "word_start%")
.joins(:tech)
.order(usage_count: desc)
.limit(5)
This is starting point. It's fundamentally different from the gem, as each tag is just a string on its own, but references a richer data table on the back end. I'll work on implementing and come back to update with a better solution.
Related
My SEO-people do not write code. All they love is creating good texts. All they can do is pasting texts do database via some nice forms.
The problem is that sometimes they ask me: we need to put the text into page footer. Wee need to put some other text into page header.
And I just can not edit the code every time SEO-man asks me!
And sometimes the text are not related directly to model. I think you will understand me that it is a bad idea to create footer_block field inside a Car or Person model.
How nice it would if there was a gem that could:
Load text data from database by key (for example 'FOOTER_BLOCK'). To let me not to turn the models into a mess!
Give us forms where a SEO-person could paste the text
(Would be nice) Give us a WISIWIG editor.
PS: An example of such functionality (but not in Ruby): I used to code in python/Django. And we used django-flatblocks package - it did fit these 3 criterias.
I don't know any gem which will do this, but hopefully I can shed some light on how you might be able to achieve it
Code Blocks
You could create a table (and model) called code_blocks. The schema may look like this:
code_blocks
id | title | body | created_at | updated_at
This will allow you to create any number of records in this table that you want, and then call them from your app without the need for specific controller actions
Display
You could do this:
#app/helpers/application_helper.rb
def code_block(id)
block = CodeBlock.find(id)
return block.body
end
This may be inefficient, but it will allow you to include the code blocks whereever you want on the page, independent of the controller actions
So, for example, you have a footer block with id as 3, you could put:
<%= code_block(3) %>
Editing
This will mean that if you have a simple backend form, you can set it up so that you list the blocks by title, and allow the SEO guys to edit the HTML with a WYSIWYG editor (saving the HTML in the body column)
I'm trying to expose a search feature in rails. I want a user to be able to enter a string like name:"john" color:"blue" and get a list of ActiveRecord objects for some model that have a name attribute containing john and a color attribute containing blue. I'd also like them to be able to use and and or and parentheses e.g. name:"john" or color:"blue" or (name:"john" color:"blue") or name:"bill". Ideally they could also use things like age<20 where age is an numeric field. Is there a rails plugin that does this. I've was looking briefly at sphinx and ferret both of which seem to create an api for this but it was unclear whether they provided a clear text based option or if I would need to parse the search strings myself.
Ernie's Ransack gem is a good place to start.
You will have to provide an intermediate layer between your submitted form and the Ransack code (this would be a good idea anyway for security reasons) to convert strings from the format you desire to something Ransack can understand.
If you check the demo page and the documentation for the gem you'll find it's quite simple to create the sort of queries you're after.
Watch how GET requests are generated from the conditions you build and in your application replace the builder Ernie has in the demo with a single textfield accepting strings like (name:"john" color:"blue") or name:"bill". Do some pattern matching when this field is submitted and build a proper querystring to pass onto the Ransack gem.
Edit
For future questions like "what's a popular gem for ______?", check out The Ruby Toolbox. If Ransack doesn't suit your needs, perhaps a gem in the Rails Search category has what you're looking for. I personally use Ransack for exactly what you're describing; providing a custom query interface for my application's User model.
I'd suggest doing your own search class. I find that for each app I do, the needs of search change considerably and it's simple enough to create a search app that considers all the variables you might want in a search query, posed against any number of classes you want to search.
In your Search class, have it return a collection, in the order you desire, and the collection can be made up of object instances that the searcher may desire.
I have a new application that contains a Modela called "Campaigns". Each campaign is able to have any number of tags associated with it.
What I am attempting to do is impliment a Stack Overflow-like behavior with these tags. Namely, that when you create a new campaign, it gives you a text-field that will auto-complete with tags that already exist, and start anew every time you put a space. Additionally, should the tag not exist, it should create a new tag.
This railscast is a step in the right direction, but it only allows for one "tag" at a time.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
In the model layer I'd go for a plugin like: https://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on.
In the view you want an autocomplete plugin (personally I use this http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/autocomplete). Then either generate a controller for the tags and fetch the autocomplete list remotely or just = them in the page.
Let's say I want to trend all comments posted on a site and create dynamic tags. For example, If there are x number of comments that contain the word iPad I would like to create automatically create a tag called "iPad" and put it in a tag cloud.
Is this possible? I checked out the acts_as_taggable gem but it requires one to specify a tag, I guess I am looking for a way to generate tags from content.
Well something like the yahoo term extraction service might do the trick and there is a plugin for it http://expressica.com/auto_tags/.
Though it is not for commercial use.
Sure, this is possible.
Just parse the content of each comment as it's passed in and attach the tags you're interested in.
This can either work on a whitelist - where you specify all the tags you're interested in and attach those if relevant.
Or it could work on a blacklist - where you specify all the words to ignore, e.g. "the", "on". This approach is probably a lot more time consuming, but would allow for more dynamic results.
I would probably work on a white list, then have an ability to add new tags to the whitelist and have it go back and retroactively add the tags where applicable.
I have a difficult situation.
I let the the user create a form through a Rich Text Editor and then I save this.
So for example, I save this literally into my DB:
http://pastebin.com/DNdeetJp (how can you post HTML here? It gets interpreted, so now I use pastebin...)
On another page I wrap this in a form_tag and it gets presented as it should be.
What I want to do is save this as a template and save the answers as a hashmap to my DB.
This works well, but the problem is I want to recreate what checkbox/radiobutton/... is selected when the user goes back to the page. So I want to fill the form with the answers from the hashmap.
Is there a way to use a 'dummy' model or something else to accomplish this?
Thanks!
Since you're pasting in raw HTML which is not properly configured as a template, it is more difficult to enable the proper options based on whatever might be stored in your DB.
The reliable approach to making this work is to use Hpricot or Nokogiri to manipulate the bit of HTML you have and substitute values accordingly. This isn't too hard so long as you can define the elements in that form using a proper selector. For example, create a div with a unique id and operate on all input elements within it, comparing the name attribute with your properties. There may even be a library for this somewhere.
The second approach is to use JavaScript to enable the options in much the same fashion. This seems like a bit of a hack since the form itself will not have a proper default state.