A Simple Twitter App with Ruby on Rails – Building Friendships

• By Noupe Editorial Team
• Posted in AJAX
• 23 comments

Introduction

This is the third and final part of series on how to create a twitter style web application with Ruby on Rails. This part will cover how to add friendships between users.

• The first part of this tutorial: A Simple Twitter App with Ruby on Rails – Messages With Ajax
• The second part of this tutorial: A Simple Twitter App with Ruby on Rails – User Authentication

Self-Referential Relationship

To create friendships between users we have to deal with a special type of association, which is called a self referential relationship. It is called this because the model (in this case, User) references itself. Why? Well if a given “user” has many “friends”, those “friends” are also “users”. Furthermore, each of those friends can also have friends, so we are dealing with a many to many relationship.

The relationship can affectively be called a “friendship” because friendships can be gained and lost (as in real life). So, let’s create the friendship model with two foreign keys.

  > ruby script/generate model friendship user_id:integer friend_id:integer

Now, migrate the database:-

  > rake db:migrate

Making and Losing Friends

We will need to create and destroy friendships and for this we will need a controller for friendships:-

  > ruby script/generate controller friendships

Now add the create and destroy methods as shown below:-

class FriendshipsController < ApplicationController
  def create
    @friendship = current_user.friendships.build(:friend_id => params[:friend_id])
    if @friendship.save
      flash[:notice] = "Added friend."
      redirect_to root_url
    else
      flash[:error] = "Error occurred when adding friend."
      redirect_to root_url
    end
  end
  
  def destroy
    @friendship = current_user.friendships.find(params[:id])
    @friendship.destroy
    flash[:notice] = "Successfully destroyed friendship."
    redirect_to root_url
  end
end

So, what exactly do we relate the user model to?? Well, first we need to specify that the friendship model belongs to a friend (which is actually a user!). You can do this by adding some more lines to the user model:-

class Friendship < ActiveRecord::Base
  ...
  belongs_to :friend, :class_name => "User"
end

We need to add two lines to the User model. A User has many friendships and has many friends through friendships. This reads almost exactly as it is coded, which is a testament to Ruby on Rails.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :friendships
  has_many :friends, :through => :friendships
  ...
end

Listing your Friends

If we want to list all the registered users and allow the current user to befriend other users, then we will need to create a new view in the users folder called index.html.erb:-

  < % @users.each do |user| %>
    

      < % if user.username != current_user.username %>
        < %=h user.username %>
        < %= link_to "Add Friend", friendships_path(:friend_id => user), :method => :post %>
      < % end %>
    
    
  < % end %>

Now, let’s put the controller actions in place. Open the users_controller file and add the index and show methods.

class UsersController < ApplicationController
  def index
    @users = User.all
  end
  
  def show
    @user = current_user
  end
  ...
end

We need to do two more things before we can give this a whirl. First add the friendships resource to the routes file:-

map.resources :friendships

…and finally, we can add some links on the posts/index.html.erb file:-

...
< %= link_to "Make Friends", users_path %>
< %= link_to "My Friends", { :controller => "users", :action => "show", :id => current_user } %>

Ok, we can now start up the server and browse to http://localhost:3000 to have a look.

Summary

Obviously there are several directions you could take this application. A lot of features could be added and it could be spruced up, somewhat. I hope these tutorials have helped you in some way and again, I would highly recommend that you try Ruby on Rails, if you haven’t already.

Comments and Discussions

• 

  Reply

  ijlal, 13 August 2009

  Beautiful code. and very well written tutorial.

  Thanks.

• 

  Reply

  Travis Dunn, 13 August 2009

  I just finished doing some analysis on modeling friendships myself. Here are a few other resources I found useful:

  swemoney’s has_many_friends plugin, which while no longer in active development, is worth reviewing the source code for some ideas for convenience methods and an alternative association model.

  http://github.com/swemoney/has_many_friends/tree/master

  There is also a few excellent questions on stackoverflow addressing this scenario:

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/623909/rails-model-with-foreignkey-and-link-table/623956#624261

  http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1071014/rails-two-way-friendship-model-contd

  And, of course, Ryan Bates’ railscast:

  http://railscasts.com/episodes/163-self-referential-association

• 

  Reply

  Daquan Wright, 13 August 2009

  Don’t work in rails but interesting tutorial nonetheless. Code is quite clear.

• 

  Reply

  used cars ireland on rails, 14 August 2009

  Thanks, simple and well explained.

  • 

    Reply

    ashiq ali, 17 August 2009

    how to upgrate my photoshop skill.

• 

  Reply

  Hakim web design, 14 August 2009

  Every new idea is a new reflexion i will google it

• 

  Reply

  neb, 15 August 2009

  helpful tutorial. Thanks.

• 

  Reply

  dacunk, 14 September 2009

  nice!!

• 

  Reply

  TheWebTuts, 08 October 2009

  Tutorial added to TheWebTuts

• 

  Reply

  noname, 05 December 2009

  Is there something missing in this tut?

  Where did you write “Find New Friends”?

• 

  Reply

  Matt, 20 December 2009

  Can you post the code for /users/show.html.erb it’s not in the tutorial

  • 

    Reply

    Matt, 20 December 2009

    nevermind found it here

    http://github.com/overture8/Twitter-Blog-Demo/blob/master/app/views/users/show.html.erb

    you need to create /users/show.html.erb file and code is:

    Username:

    Friends

    – :delete %>

• 

  Reply

  Mike, 28 December 2009

  Wow this is a great tutorial, thanks.

  One thing though, i noticed i can add the same friend twice. I want to make it so when i go to add friends if a friendship exists then it doesn’t display the friend when i go to find new friends or when i click the add friend it flash[:notice] = “that user is already your friend”. Im assuming this would probably go in the controller but i dont know how to check if a friendship exists.

  • 

    Reply

    furlan, 27 January 2010

    lol.. just check in if that user is on the array of users

• 

  Reply

  jen, 19 January 2010

  hi,
  same question with mike.
  kindly please help me. thanks. :)

• 

  Reply

  Phrozen, 07 February 2010

  Pretty good tutorial, I’m used to Ruby but I’m starting in Rails and this is really a must for starters, it takes you all the way and (i did) let’s you add more things on the go. Some of the code is missing in all tutorials though, makes it hard to follow and sometimes is not easy to figure it out yourself.

• 

  Reply

  vineeth kumar.s, 26 April 2010

  So, what exactly do we relate the user model to?? Well, first we need to specify that the friendship model belongs to a friend (which is actually a user!). You can do this by adding some more lines to the user model:-

  class Friendship “User”
  end

  i think u have misplaced user model instead friendship model ..

• 

  Reply

  Buddy Beers, 28 July 2010

  The problem I see with this method is that friendships are reciprocal. So, if user 1 is listed as friends with user 2 then user 2 must also be friends with user 1. Creating another database entry for this seems redundant. How would you handle this?

  • 

    Reply

    Benjo, 31 August 2010

    No it is not redundant. because each row is unique. (Row #1) has user2 as user1′s follower. (Row #2) If they follow each other : user1 as user2′s follower. Easy and simple. (think of difference in facebook and twitter.. in facebook u have to confirm friendship, in twitter u dont)

• 

  Reply

  Daniel, 04 September 2010

  I’ve worked through this tutorial and got it all working but I want to add a feature and i can’t work out how to do it:

  I’m able to get a list of the people a person is following. But I can’t work out how to get a list of the people following a person…

  that only shows the people being follow by a user…

  I have looked at the SQL table and its storing the links with the user_id and the friend_id… so the above code looks for all records where the @user.id is = to user_id in the table…

  I need to be able to access all the records where friend_id = @user.id to get a list of people following the user…

• 

  Reply

  Anamaria Feltner, 13 October 2010

  2. Magnificent concept, I used to be impressed and i find your blog extremely detail. In reality, you write them comprehensibly and it can make me understand right away. One factor, I love each word you scribble.

• 

  Reply

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  Reply

  Bada, 19 March 2012

  The action ‘index’ could not be found for FriendshipsController, dont know why i keep having this issue, im using Rails 3