notifications (or flash messages) in an api application

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello!

As a noob in rails, i am having a problem on how to find a decent and straightforward notifications system for my application. Being a Api like application (talking with the client is made using JSON / later on XML as well), i have a problem finding a good solution to feed my needs.

I have tried to use the rails validators, but then i have realized that is not a good solution, as i need to send normal notifications as well (Ex: "You have successfully bought this item" ).

After that ideea failed ... I have tried to implement a "Notification" module inside my user model as, all my notifications are user related. However ... this system has 2 instance variables : @notifications and @api_errors. Now, the problem would be the validation of the user action, and here might be several messages to send:

- Stock finished - No money - No access to this feature ... - CC invalid ... etc

now ... i can do my checks like

if false == money_requirement? self.add_api_error "You do not have enough money" end

if false == product.stock_requirement?   self.add_api_error .... end

But the main problem ... would be now, the method of trigger the action.

if self.api_errors.size == 0   # do play with the user account, stocks and other stuff .... end

what i am asking you: Is there any way to play with those notifications and errors without passing through the database? They are more like flashes, but the code is inside the model ... so, i don't want to fall into an antipattern having session related info inside my model.

Thanks.

2

if false == money_requirement? self.add_api_error "You do not have enough money" end

Or should that be "Money enough, you have not. Buy, or buy not, there is no try!"? :slight_smile: Having Yodified a lot of my checks in the dim distant past, when working in C, and then discovering that cranking up the warning level would flag "assignment in conditional"s for me, I've since gone back to the standard, more readable, order.

Anyway....

There's no need for an == at all when checking a boolean. Just use "if ! money_requirement?". Also, getting into the habit of comparing against false, will trip you up later when you really just want to check "falsiness", but what you're checking returns *nil* on a failure instead of the actual value *false*.

what i am asking you: Is there any way to play with those notifications and errors without passing through the database?

I'm not sure what you mean by "passing through". As in, you want to pass them to the user, but don't want to record them in the database, I presume.

Off the top of my head, what you could do is pass back a wrapper type that includes the notices and the actual data object, and not record the wrapper in the db, only the actual data object. Or, attach the flash and suchlike, only *after* you've done the saving.

That strikes me as a bit of a hack, though. There's bound to be a more Rails-ish way to do it. Maybe this will serve as a "bump" and someone will enlighten us. Maybe Rails is smart enough to know, "don't save the thing called 'flash'"?

-Dave