Rails Gallery by Paul Thompson
A simple image gallery web app.
git clone https://github.com/nossidge/rails_gallery.git
cd rails_gallery
ruby -v
The ouput should start with something like ruby 2.5.5
If not, install the right ruby version.
Using rbenv:
rbenv install 2.5.5
Using rvm:
rvm install ruby-2.5.5
(Or install Ruby yourself manually.)
Using Bundler:
bundle
Example images are fetched from ThisPersonDoesNotExist.com
rails db:create db:migrate
rails db:seed
rails server
You can log into any of the seeded accounts using the password password
The email format is firstname@lastname.com
Example:
username: Adam Almond
email: adam@almond.com
password: password
I thought I'd share some notes about how well (and not) it went. I wrote most of this on Thursday morning so it's not a live log, but I'll note down what I remember of the processes I went through.
After the meeting on Wednesday I spent the afternoon reading Rails stuff. It took a good part of Thursday to make sure my box was setup with the latest Ruby and Rails, and that all the needed gems could be successfully installed. I knew I needed Rails 5.2 for ActiveStorage, and I wanted to make sure MongoDB was up and running. I didn't have much problem with this, it just took some time. I also spend time reading all I could about Rails.
I had gone through an online Rails tutorial on Friday and Saturday, to re-familiarise myself with Rails. The one difference I made to the tutorial project was that where the tutorial used SQLite, I used MongoDB. You said to try it, so I thought I'd try it :-). I followed the example exactly, to make sure that my setup caused no errors.
When I'd finished the tutorial I thought I'd better do a trial run of ActiveStorage on a working project, just to iron out any kinks I might have.
A pretty big kink it turns out. ActiveStorage only works with ActiveRecord. The clue's in the name, I guess.
So the options were ActiveRecord and ActiveStorage, or Mongo and some external gem. Maybe Shrine? I don't know. I figured I'd go with ActiveStorage, simply because it's built in, and I could find more tutorials to help me. If I'd had more time, I'd have gone with Mongo, but I had to compromise. So I copped out and went with the default SQLite.
I started the actual project on Sunday. The first few commits are the usual Gemfile stuff. I also created the basic user CRUD and views, and added Bootstrap to make it look passable.
I'm not the best at UI, but I think what I have looks okay. It's mostly cribbed from the Album example.
I wanted to use Capybara to text HTML visits for the controllers, but couldn't get it working. Error was:
Capybara::ElementNotFound:
Unable to find xpath "/html"
Some puts debugging gave this:
puts "~#{users_path}~" => ~/users~
puts "~#{page.html}~" => ~~
puts "~#{page}~" => ~#<Capybara::Session:0x0000000008fb9b88>~
So it was returning a Capybara::Session, but it wasn't returning the html. I'm sure there's some config option I've missed, but I'm feeling the deadline.
Honestly, this is what has stressed me out the most about this project. I think that if there's anything that's going to make you think I don't have what it takes to be a good good Ruby boy it's a lack of testing.
Honestly, I can test code. Look at this. This is okay. This is test-driven. https://github.com/nossidge/tildeverse/tree/master/spec
I feel like testing for Rails is exponentially more difficult than just testing regular Ruby objects. There's so many things I just don't know yet. But I will get there.
So yeah, I was feeling pretty terrible about my lack of skills, but there was still work to be done. Sessions was next. I found a pretty good tutorial on how to implement it, so this wasn't too hard.
Then I added the Gallery CRUD and views, and worked to implement 'current_user' and 'owner?' validation to the views and requests that required them.
On Tuesday I started working on this. This was the big one. The thing I'd been dreading. There were stumbling blocks, but it wasn't as bad as I'd feared. One thing I had to figure out was how to validate the uploads, to make sure they were images. Luckily there's a gem for that, but I couldn't figure out how to get it working with multi-image uploads. So you can only upload one image at a time. Kind of a cop-out, but not deal-breaking.
Once I'd got images in place, I worked on making them viewable in the views where they'd be needed, including the User and Galleries views. It was easy to integrate them here, because of the card-based layout I'd set up from the start.
On Wednesday I added the code to generate thumbnails. This was also far easier than I'd expected. They're cached automatically by Rails. Nice.
I spent most of Wednesday moving logic from views into helpers and partials. There's still more to do on this front. There's lots of misplaced conditionals that should be cleaned up. I put this down to inexperience, it's something that will improve with practise.
I spent a fair few hours on Wednesday night trying to figure out how to get this to work. Users and galleries were no problem, but images with their ActiveStorage files were tricky.
I had a minor issue with figuring out how to add directly from a URL, but I solved that soon enough. The big problem was that it would successfully create the first user, and the first gallery, and would correctly attach images to that, but it would fail when trying to attach images to the next created gallery.
The solution is very silly. Instead of running:
$ rails db:create db:migrate db:seed
You have to run:
$ rails db:create db:migrate
$ rails db:seed
Ridiculous.
On the last day, I fixed an issue with 'galleries/edit' not correctly showing the gallery name and description. This occurred because I tried to get all fancy with the show/hide collapsible form. I'm still not sure how you're supposed to do it, but my solution works.
I also took a last pass at all the forms in the app, just ensuring that the layout made sense and adding cancel buttons to take the user back.
I also added custom HTTP error handling, integrating it into the layout of the site.
Then I finished this readme, and uploaded to GitHub.
I'm still not happy with the users/edit form - I think there should be separate forms for changing username, email address, and password. It works okay, but it's far from perfect.
I'm also not sure about the deletion of ActiveStorage objects. I'm not convinced it actually kills them from the 'root/storage' directory. That's just something I'll need to look up.
There's still lots of things I'd like to add. Here are some thoughts:
- Slideshow (see PDF)
- Cropping (see PDF)
- Static pages for About & Contact
- User can re-order images within gallery
- User can choose a featured image for the gallery, instead of using first image thumbnail
- User can choose an avatar for themselves from their own images
- On user creation, send mail with verification link
- Users can favourite each others' galleries/images
- Users can add comments on each others' galleries/images
- Images and galleries can be tagged by the owner
- Pagination of results for all index routes
- Filtering of results in index routes
The single most important thing that I need to learn is how to test Rails apps. The project as it is might be fine, it might fulfil the brief and it might be functional, but I can't be sure. I've been writing specs almost daily for the past two years; I thought it would be easier, but Rails adds complexity that I was unprepared for. I need to understand this if I want to feel any kind of comfort coding for Rails.
I need to learn how better to separate my logic from my views. Once I'd got the basic MVP implemented, I did do some DRYing up of some view logic, but I need to get into the swing of thinking about that stuff on first write.
There's some grotty UI logic going on in the Gallery#edit view. UI is still an issue for me. I feel like half my time on this project was spent on learning Rails idiosyncrasies and the other half on the views. Back-end stuff will always be my preference, but I need to work on this stuff so that I'm not spending so much time on it.
The main thing I learned is that I need to do more Rails stuff. I can put most of these issues down to inexperience, and this stuff just gets easier with practise. I haven't touched Rails in 18 months, so I can only get better.
Despite all the problems I had, I'm proud of this project.