b : h : l

On a recent project I needed the ability to register and unregister users from a Rails app, specifically a simple User model. At first I just added the necessary capabilities to the model itself…then realized the functionality really should exist as a library/helper. Well, if I’m going that far – might as well just drop it into a “plugin”.

You can find the plugin here: xmmp4rails.

xmmp4rails is a simple method-level layer around a “few” of the capabilities provided by the awesome xmpp4r library.

To get the plugin:

git clone git://github.com/kitplummer/xmpp4rails.git

Here’s how I’ve used it – in my model I’ve got this:

...
before_create :xmpp_register?
...
def xmpp_register?
    begin
      register_account(self.login + "@" + CONFIG['hostname'], self.password)
    rescue StandardError
      return false
    else
      simple_send('gateway@' + CONFIG['hostname'], 
                         'CONFIG['jabberpw'], 
                         'admin@' + CONFIG['hostname'], 
                         "new account: #{identity_url}")
      return true
    end
end

So, if the registration fails, so the does the account creation. Obviously with the library called from the model you can do different things with it. Notice the simple_send method too. When an account gets created in the app – the model sends me a notification via Jabber.

I’ve also provide a simple stub so the models can still test out completely.

Hopefully this will be useful for someone else. I’d also love a reason to keep extending the functionality wrapped, as well as flesh out the tests with RSpec. Let me know.