This web application is a Salsa Blog, called Casineros Cubanos, and it's about Salsa dance and music. It's like a micro-social network, intending to connect people who love Salsa and allow others to learn more about Cuban and Latino culture. With this on Blog, people can share their knowledge, passion, and experience, related to Salsa music and …

1.Salsa Blog - Micro Social Network.md

Cuban Casineros (Casineros Cubanos)

Description

This web application is a Salsa Blog, called Casineros Cubanos, and it's about Salsa dance and music.

It's like a micro-social network, intending to connect people who love Salsa and allow others to learn more about Cuban and Latino culture.

With this on Blog, people can share their knowledge, passion, and experience, related to Salsa music and dance. Users can create, edit and categorize posts of a related topic. Also, they can upload videos and photos, make comments on other user's articles, on the blog page.

Built with Ruby on Rails

Ruby: v~ 2.6.3

Rails: v- 5.2.6

List of GEMS:

Main gems included in this project:

• kaminari for pagination
• carriewave to handle images uploads
• geocoder to integrate geolocation in Rails with the Google Maps API
• figaro to handle app variables configuration for deployment
• bcrypt to secure users password
• fog-aws to manipulate files on Amazon S3 Storage
• aws-sdk to make easier the integration of AWS with Rails
• pg to connect the Rails app to the Postgres database
• action-mailer to send emails through a contact form and comments to the users

• redcarpet for markdown support
• sendgrid-ruby to send emails through Sendgrid services provider
• bootstrap for some general styling

Database

Postgres is the database used for all environments:

• Development environment
• Test environment
• Production environment

Default users:

Role	Login	Password
Admin	[email protected]	password
Registered	[email protected]	password
Guest / Visitor	No required	No required

Services

Heroku, for the deployment of this web app:

https://casineros-cubanos.herokuapp.com/ (This version does not include the contact form view)

Sendgrid + ActionMailer: (Contact form)

It sends automatic email responses to the user after submitting the form. On top of this, it will be used to send reminders and notify registered users when updates on the website are made. This works as expected in the development environment, but not in production.

Chalenges

As developers, we learn that every single environment behaves completely different from each other.

1.- For me, it is a real challenge to make this feature (Sendgrid) to work in the production environment. Initially, I got a lot of errors, related to setup and invalid or expired key but I could solve them. However, the most challenging part was to solve the error: superclass mismatch for class Category (TypeError) which was provoked by due a typo in the class category table, wich is associated with the other models of the app.

2.- Another significant challenge was send out emails in production. The as the sendgrig-ruby Gem installation was giving me a bug related with incompatibilities in some dependencies. That issue I solved with heroku-ads-on: "Twilio SendGrid" work-around.

Amazon AWS S3 storage:

It is for users to upload images. I took advantage of Carrierwave and Minimagic gems to accomplish it. Also to ensure that users can only upload images and no other files.

GoogleMaps API: (Geocoder gem)

The initial intention for adding this feature in the project was only to display a static map of Lausanne with a few Salsa schools and Dance clubs in the area. However, the result is even better than my expectations because now users can:

Create new locations and save them in the database Search for places near a specific area of their choosing Interact with fully dynamic maps to Edit and Update places And navigate, zoom in, zoom out, and control the maps as they want I am really happy with this feature because it helped me to understand better the capabilities of the Geocoder gem and to improve my abilities with Javascript. It is also a really good base and experience for my future projects as a developer.

Youtube Iframe API:

I used it to build a dynamic video player that is making use of Javascript for users to listen and watch salsa music videos.

Summary

The differences between my proposal and my final project are as the following:

I decided to apply local translations instead of using globalize gem for content translations. I think it's more suitable in this case to use local translations as it's a blog, and not selling products company.

I changed Facebook API (Facebook authentication) for IFrame API. With IFrame API I was also able to demonstrate de use of Javascript. I found IFrame API more interesting for me to work within this project.

Extra

I included the Markdown feature to give users more flexibility to write and preview articles and comments they make. This gem is well structured and can be configured to prevent malicious content.

Gemfile

source 'https://rubygems.org'

git_source(:github) do |repo_name|
  repo_name = "#{repo_name}/#{repo_name}" unless repo_name.include?("/")
  "https://github.com/#{repo_name}.git"
end

ruby '2.6.3'

# Bundle edge Rails instead: gem 'rails', github: 'rails/rails'
gem 'rails', '~> 5.1.7'
# Use postgresql as the database for Active Record
gem 'pg', '>= 0.18', '< 2.0'
# Use Puma as the app server
gem 'puma', '~> 3.7'
# Use SCSS for stylesheets
gem 'sass-rails', '~> 5.0'
# Use Uglifier as compressor for JavaScript assets
gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'
# See https://github.com/rails/execjs#readme for more supported runtimes
# gem 'therubyracer', platforms: :ruby

# Use CoffeeScript for .coffee assets and views
gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 4.2'
# Turbolinks makes navigating your web application faster. Read more: https://github.com/turbolinks/turbolinks
gem 'turbolinks', '~> 5'
# Build JSON APIs with ease. Read more: https://github.com/rails/jbuilder
gem 'jbuilder', '~> 2.5'
# Use Redis adapter to run Action Cable in production
# gem 'redis', '~> 4.0'
# Use ActiveModel has_secure_password
gem 'bcrypt', '~> 3.1.7'

# Use Capistrano for deployment
# gem 'capistrano-rails', group: :development

group :development, :test do
  # Call 'byebug' anywhere in the code to stop execution and get a debugger console
  gem 'byebug', platforms: [:mri, :mingw, :x64_mingw]
  # Adds support for Capybara system testing and selenium driver
  gem 'capybara', '>= 2.15'
  gem 'selenium-webdriver'
end

group :development do
  # Access an IRB console on exception pages or by using <%= console %> anywhere in the code.
  gem 'web-console', '>= 3.3.0'
  gem 'listen', '>= 3.0.5', '< 3.2'
  # Spring speeds up development by keeping your application running in the background. Read more: https://github.com/rails/spring
  gem 'spring'
  gem 'spring-watcher-listen', '~> 2.0.0'
end

# Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem
gem 'tzinfo-data', platforms: [:mingw, :mswin, :x64_mingw, :jruby]

# Add Bootstrap for styling the application
gem 'bootstrap', '~> 4.3.1'
# Add JQuery as bootstrap dependency in Rails 5.1+
gem 'jquery-rails'
# Add Popper as bootstrap dependency for popups
gem 'popper_js'
# Add kaminari for setting pagination in our application
gem 'kaminari'
# Imagae uploads
gem 'carrierwave', '~> 1.1.0'
# AWS S3 storage
gem 'figaro'
gem "fog-aws"
gem 'aws-sdk'
# Geocoding with geocoder + GoogleMapsAPI
gem 'geocoder'
# Add markdown to give users more flexibility when writting posts or comments
gem 'redcarpet', github: 'vmg/redcarpet'
gem 'coderay'
# For different versions of an image (it works together with carrierwave)
gem 'mini_magick'
# Use SendGrid adapter to run Action ActionMailer in production
gem 'sendgrid-ruby'

message_mailer.rb

class MessageMailer < ApplicationMailer
  require 'sendgrid-ruby'
  include SendGrid

  def contact(message)
    @message = message

    from = Email.new(email: '[email protected]')
    to = Email.new(email: @message.email)
    subject = 'casineros cubanos Blog'
    content = Content.new(type: 'text/plain', value: "Hi dear #{@message.name}! Thanks for your massage, we will get back to you soon.")
    mail = SendGrid::Mail.new(from, subject, to, content)

    sg = SendGrid::API.new(api_key: ENV['SENDGRID_API_KEY'])
    begin # to read error messages
        response = sg.client.mail._("send").post(request_body: mail.to_json)
    rescue Exception => e
        puts e.message
    end

    puts response.status_code
    puts response.body
    puts response.headers

  end
end