Facteur allows you to add an email-like messaging system in your Rails 3 application. You can create many mailboxes for your users where they will be able to send and receive messages. Facteur supports ActiverRecord 3.0.x and Mongoid 2.0.x.

In your Gemfile add the following line :

gem 'facteur'

Then run the following command:

bundle install

First install the messaging system in your application :

rails generate facteur:install  

This commands creates the migrations which creates the tables we need so don't forget to migrate your database :

rake db:migrate

Then to activate facteur in your user model, just include the addressee's model as follows :

class User < ActiveRecord::Base  
  include Facteur::AddresseeModel
end

or

class User
  include Mongoid::Document
  include Facteur::AddresseeModel
end

Starting from version 1.3, the name of the addressee model is no more restricted to 'User'. You can add a mailbox to any model.

Each addressee must have a mailbox where he can receive messages. The mailboxes can be declared statically and/or dynamically. Let's start first by the static way :

class Member < ActiveRecord::Base  
  include Facteur::AddresseeModel
  
  mailbox :private_mailbox, :default => true
  mailbox :public_mailbox
end

The previous example declare two mailboxes that will be created for each member. The mailboxes are created when they are first accessed. Facteur generates for you two methods to access your mailboxes :

# assuming that 'login' and 'password' are fields defined for the Member model
@john = Member.create(:login => 'john', :password => 'pass')

# Now, the mailboxes exist and they can be accessed
@john.private_mailbox #=> generates and returns the private mailbox
@john.public_mailbox #=> generates and returns the public mailbox

# To check the mailboxes which where defined
Member.mailboxes #=> [{:name=>:private_mailbox, :default=>true}, {:name=>:public_mailbox}]

It is also possible to create a mailbox dynamically. This mailbox will not be available for all the members but only for the one who created it :

@john.create_mailbox(:new_mailbox) #=> true
Member.mailboxes #=> [{:name=>:private_mailbox, :default=>true}, {:name=>:public_mailbox}]
@john.mailboxes #=> [{:name=>:private_mailbox, :default=>true}, {:name=>:public_mailbox}, {:name=>:new_mailbox}]

After the previous example, the "news_mailbox" is only avalaible to John. The names of the mailboxes must be unique. if you try to create a mailbox which already exists, the create_mailbox() method will fail and return false.

It is possible to send a message to one or many addressee :

@peter = Member.create(:login => 'peter', :password => 'pass')
@mary = Member.create(:login => 'mary', :password => 'pass')

@john.send_message('hello', :to => @peter, :in => :private_mailbox)
@john.send_message('hello', :to => [@peter, @mary], :in => :public_mailbox)

The 'in' option is not mandatory. If it is not given, the message is delivered to the default mailbox. If there is no default mailbox defined then the method fails.

You can access the messages in a mailbox :

@peter.private_mailbox.messages

To list the messages sent by a user :

@john.sent_messages

This section list the other methods available for each elements of the messaging system :

mailboxes      : mailboxes assigned to this user
sent_messages  : messages sent by the user

addressee : who the mailbox is assigned to
messages  : messages who are stored in the mailbox
name      : the name of the mailbox

mailbox     : mailbox where the message is stored
author      : user who send the message
addressees  : who the message was sent to
body        : body of the message
subject     : subject of the message
created_at  : date of creation

It is possible to test facteur by running the following command from the gem directory:

rake spec:activerecord # activerecord tests
rake spec:mongoid      # mongoid tests

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright (c) 2011 Rawane ZOSSOU. See LICENSE for details.