When deciding the theme for my projects, I often think if it would be something I would use. For example, my CLI project was all about looking for breweries in a city. Cause that’s what I do, look for museums at day and breweries at night. I swear, I’ve probably seen more Claude Monet paintings than the total of IPA beers I ever had.
And also this one:
This time, I decided to take things further. Instead of something I would use. Why not do something I would DO for others? That’s when I decided to use my social media movie page as the theme for the Sinatra project. Small Reviews which literally translate to spanish as reseñitas (a quirk in Puerto Rico is to use the diminutive word for everything), it started as a way to show my love for movies and distract myself from deppresion and post Hurricane Maria PTSD. It all started with this post:
As far as the code goes, is a simple project. You’re all LiveJournal probably looks better, but it does everything we need to have a full CRUD functional website. Being a reviews website the Controllers are Appplication Controller, Users Controller, Sessions Controller and Reviews Controller. The typical Session Controller looks like this:
class SessionsController < ApplicationController
get "/signup" do
if logged_in?
redirect to '/reviews'
else
erb :"users/signup"
end
end
post "/signup" do
@user = User.new(:username => params[:username], :email => params[:email], :password => params[:password])
if @user.save
session[:user_id] = @user.id
redirect "/reviews"
else
redirect "/signup"
end
end
get "/login" do
if logged_in?
redirect to '/reviews'
else
erb :"users/login"
end
end
post "/login" do
@user = User.find_by(username: params[:username])
if @user && @user.authenticate(params[:password])
session[:user_id] = @user.id
redirect "/reviews"
else
redirect "/login"
end
end
get "/logout" do
session.clear
redirect "/"
end
end
What I would really like to share is the reviews controller. Sinatra can look ugly, we can star with an if statement, then another statement, so on and so on to the point that literally hurts to watch. Thanks to a good friend in the cohort, we figure out how to make it better. Now, it looks like this:
class ReviewsController < ApplicationController
get "/reviews" do
@reviews = Review.all
erb :"reviews/index"
end
get "/reviews/new" do
erb :"reviews/new"
end
post "/reviews" do
@review = Review.new(:title => params[:title], :content => params[:content], :user_id => params[:user_id], :created_at => "#{Time.now}", :updated_at => "#{Time.now}")
if @review.save
redirect "/reviews/#{@review.id}"
else
redirect "/reviews/new"
end
end
get "/reviews/:id" do
set_review
if @review
erb :"reviews/display"
else
redirect "/reviews"
end
end
patch "/reviews/:id" do
set_review
if @review && auth_user
@review.update(:title => params[:title], :content => params[:content])
@review.save
redirect "/reviews/#{@review.id}"
else
redirect "/reviews"
end
end
get "/reviews/:id/edit" do
set_review
if @review && auth_user
erb :"reviews/edit"
else
redirect "reviews/error"
end
end
delete '/reviews/:id/delete' do
set_review
if @review && auth_user
@review.delete
redirect "/reviews"
else
erb :"reviews/error"
end
end
Trust me, is way cleaner it looked before. If you noticed I’m calling set_review and auth_user, it is through Private methods. Private methods are used like Helper methods to simplify your code. I recall doing Private methods in the lab, but never used it again. We need to treat our codes like an art form and get creative with it. Make it look presentable and beautiful. My Private methods look like this:
private
def set_review
@review = Review.find_by_id(params[:id])
end
def auth_user
@review.user.id == current_user.id
end
end
current_user comes from the Helpers method.
helpers do
def logged_in?
!!session[:user_id]
end
def current_user
User.find(session[:user_id])
end
end
Take your time, be creative. Then we can celebrate like a Renoir painting.
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