Juixe Techknow

Right on the heels of my release of acts_as_commentable, I am now making available a acts_as_voteable Ruby on Rails plugin. The Acts As Voteable plugin allows for model to be voted on by users.

To install this plugin run the following command:

script/plugin install http://juixe.com/svn/acts_as_voteable

The installation process will add several ruby files in the vendor/plugins directory. Create a new rails migration and cut and past the following self.up and self.down methods:

def self.up
  create_table :votes, :force => true do |t|
    t.column :vote, :boolean, :default => false
    t.column :created_at, :datetime, :null => false
    t.column :voteable_type, :string, :limit => 15,
      :default => "", :null => false
    t.column :voteable_id, :integer, :default => 0, :null => false
    t.column :user_id, :integer, :default => 0, :null => false
  end

  add_index :votes, ["user_id"], :name => "fk_votes_user"
end

def self.down
  drop_table :votes
end

Once you have installed the plugin you can start using it in your ActiveRecord models simply by calling the acts_as_voteable method.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_voteable
end

To cast a vote for a post you can do the following:

vote = Vote.new(:vote => true)
post = Post.find(params[:id])
post.votes << vote

ActiveRecord models that act as voteable can be queried for the positive votes, negative votes, and a total vote count by using the votes_for, votes_against, and votes_count methods respectively. Here is an example:

positiveVoteCount = post.votes_for
negativeVoteCount = post.votes_against
totalVoteCount = post.votes_count

And because the Acts As Voteable plugin will add the has_many votes relationship to your model you can always get all the votes by using the votes property:

allVotes = post.votes

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