WanderList - My Sinatra Project

The idea behind WanderList is to allow users (wanderers) to create boards where they can pin trips from the list that the app scrapes from here.

homepage

Set-up

I started out by creating a repository in github and then cloned it in my IDE terminal. Following what we had seen in the previous labs and lessons, I then created Gemfile with the dependencies my app would require, followed by Rakefile, config.ru, README.md and spec.md in the root of the directory. Next, I created an app folder for my MVC, a config folder for my environment and a db folder for migrations. Way later, I decided to also created a lib folder where my scraper file would reside.

Models

I had four models for my app – User, Trip , Board and BoardTrip. The associations between my models were such that:

A user has many boards and has many trips through boards
A board belongs to a user, has many board_trips and has many trips through board_trips
A trip has many board_trips, has many boards through board_trips, has many users through boards
A boardtrip belongs to a trip and also belongs to a board

I then wrote migrations to create corresponding tables for each of my models alongside a join table for the many-to-many relationship between Board and Trip. So, I had tables named users, boards, trips and board_trips.

Controllers

I had four controllers for my app each with their own corresponding erb files in the view folder.

ApplicationController < Sinatra::Base
- The main Controller class with enabled session and route for the homepage.
UserController < ApplicationController
- Controller class containing the routes for user login/logout, registration, index and individual user’s page.
BoardController < ApplicationController
- Controller class containing the routes for creating, editing, deleting and showing boards.
TripController < ApplicationController
- Controller class containing the route to view all trips.

Validations

I had a few validations in place to prevent bad inputs.

User(s) can’t sign up unless they fill out all required fields, i.e. username,
email and password

The above requirement was met by putting the following lines of code in User class:

   validates :username, :email, :password, presence: true
   validates :username, uniqueness: { case_sensitive: false }
   validates :email, uniqueness: true

And, the following lines of code in UserController raises an error if the above
validation fails:

  post '/signup do
  ...
  elsif !!params[:username].empty? || !!params[:email].empty? || !!params[:password].empty?
     flash[:message] = @user.errors.full_messages[0]
     redirect to '/signup'
  end

Usernames and email addresses are unique

The uniqueness part in the validation code in User class makes sure that the
usernames and email addresses are unique and if not raises an error.
User(s) cannot create a board without a name

Similarly, I added the following lines of code in Board class to make sure that one can not create a board without a name.
```
  validates :name, presence: true
```
Then, I added the following condition in post '/boards route in BoardController:
```
  if !@board.save
  flash[:message] = @board.errors.full_messages[0]
  redirect to '/boards/new'
  ...
```

Conclusion

This project was not as intimidating to start as was my first project. I had the confidence to start with a clean directory and without tests to guide me. I also told myself that I would not take more than a week to finish this and setting up a deadline sort of helped. Also, drawing out what I wanted my controllers and forms to do helped me visualize how my app should work and therefore helped me write the code accordingly. Overall, the sinatra section of the course was a big chunk to swallow and at times I felt like I was moving too fast without taking a moment to make sure I had retained the material. However, the last few labs and the portfolio project really pushed me to go back and revise and use up online tools to reach my goal.

Here’s the link to my video walkthrough of the app if you’d like to check out.