Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby

Chang Sau Sheong

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781849511063
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Programming in Ruby
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

Most users on the Internet have a few favorite Internet web applications that they use often and cannot do without. These popular applications often provide essential services that we need even while we don't fully understand its features or how they work. Ruby empowers you to develop your own clones of such applications without much ordeal. Learning how these sites work and describing how they can be implemented enables you to move to the next step of customizing them and enabling your own version of these services.

This book shows the reader how to clone some of the Internet's most popular applications in Ruby by first identifying their main features, and then showing example Ruby code to replicate this functionality.

While we understand that it  connects us to our friends and people we want to meet up with, what is the common feature of a social network that makes it a social network? And how do these features work? This book is the answer to all these questions. It will provide a step-by-step explanation on how the application is designed and coded, and then how it is deployed to the Heroku cloud platform. This book's main purpose is to break up popular Internet services such as TinyURL, Twitter, Flickr, and Facebook to understand what makes it tick. Then using Ruby, the book describes how a minimal set of features for these sites can be modeled, built, and deployed on the Internet.

Break up and rewrite popular social networking and other Internet applications using Ruby

Approach

This is a hands-on book with plenty of well-explained code. Each chapter has a standalone project in which a complete web application with specific features of a social networking site is emphasized. The final chapter of the book is a project that has a complete and fully developed social networking site. Each chapter begins with a brief description of the features of the Internet service and the market it is within. After extracting the main features of the service, the chapter goes into explaining how a clone of the service can be designed, followed by a short description of the technologies and platforms being used. The bulk of the chapter goes into describing how the clone is built, with step-by-step explanations and code examples. Finally, the chapter shows how the finished clone can be deployed on the Internet.

Who this book is for

This book is written for web application programmers with an intermediate knowledge of Ruby. You should also know how web applications work and you have used at least some of the cloned Internet services before. If you are a trying to find out exactly how can you make your very own customized applications such as TinyURL, Twitter, Flickr, or Facebook, this book is for you. Programmers who want to include features of these Internet services into their own web applications will also find this book interesting.

Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby

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Table of Contents

Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgement

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Cloning Internet Applications

Who would find this book useful

Popular Internet applications

Technologies used

Sinatra

Installing

Routes

Splitting a route into multiple files

Redirection

Filters

Static pages

Views

Layouts

Helpers

Error handling

DataMapper

Installing

Connecting to the database

Creating models

Defining associations between models

One-to-one

One-to-many

Many-to-many

Creating the database tables

Finding records

Haml

Installing

Using Haml

Haml and Ruby

How this book works

Caveat

Summary

2. URL Shorteners – Cloning TinyURL

All about URL shorteners

Main features

Designing the clone

Creating a short URL for each long URL

Automatically redirecting from a short URL to a long URL

Providing a customized short URL

Filtering undesirable words out

Previewing the long URL

Providing statistics

Technologies and platforms used

Sinatra

Haml

DataMapper

Blueprint CSS

Mashups

Google Chart API

HostIP

Heroku

Building the clone

Data model

Url

Link

Visit

Application flow

Deploying the clone

Summary

3. Microblogs – Cloning Twitter

All about microblogs

Twitter

Why Twitter?

Simple

A means to have public conversation

Fan versus friend

Understanding user behavior

Easy to share through text messaging

Easy to access through multiple devices and applications

Main features

Designing the clone

Posting statuses

Following users

Sending publicly directed messages

Sending privately directed messages

Re-tweeting

Public timeline

API

Authentication, access control, and user management

Third party authentication and access control

Authentication and user management

Scalability and stability

Technologies and platforms used

JSON

Mashups

RPX

Google ClientLogin

Gravatar

TinyURL

Heroku

Building the clone

Modeling the data

User

Status

Building the application flow

Authenticating and managing users

Displaying and updating statuses

Sending and displaying direct messages

Showing and forming relationships

Implementing the API

Deploying the clone

Deploying locally

Deploying to the cloud

Summary

4. Photo Sharing – Cloning Flickr

All about photo-sharing services

Flickr

Main features

Designing the clone

Authentication, access control, and user management

Albums and photos

Uploading and storing photos

Filesystem

Database

Comments

Annotations

Editing photos

Friendly URLs

Sharing photos

Technologies and platforms used

Mashups

RPX

Gravatar

Pixlr

Amazon Web Services Simple Storage Service (S3)

RightAWS

Building the clone

Configuration

Modeling the data

User

Album

Photo

Annotation

Comment

Building the application flow

Authenticating and managing users

Landing page

Managing albums

Uploading photos

Displaying photos

Annotating photos

Commenting on photos

Editing photos

Sharing photos

Deploying the clone

Deploying on a server

Summary

5. Social Networking Services – Cloning Facebook 1

All about social networking services

Facebook

Main features

User

Community

Content sharing

Designing the clone

Authentication, access control, and user management

Status updates

User activity feeds and news feeds

Friends list and inviting users to join

Posting to the wall

Sending messages

Attending events

Forming groups

Commenting on and liking content

Sharing photos

Blogging with pages

Technologies and platforms used

Mashups

Facebook Connect

Building the clone

Configuring the clone

Modeling the data

User

Request

Message

Album

Photo

Status

Group

Event

Page

Wall

Activity

Comment

Like

Summary

6. Social Networking Services – Cloning Facebook 2

Building the application flow

Structure of the application and flow

Authenticating and managing users

Landing page, news feed, and statuses

Inviting friends and friends list

Registering a Facebook application

Creating a cross-domain communication channel file

Writing the code

User page and activity feeds

Posting to a wall

Sharing photos

Managing albums

Uploading photos

Displaying photos

Annotating photos

Viewing friends' photos

Sending messages

Creating events

Forming groups

Sharing content through pages

Commenting and liking

Deploying the clone

Deploying locally

Deploying to the cloud

Summary

Index

Cloning Internet Applications with Ruby

Copyright © 2010 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: August 2010

Production Reference: 1110810

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

32 Lincoln Road

Olton

Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK.

ISBN 978-1-849511-06-3

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Chang Sau Sheong

Reviewer

Warren Brian Noronha

Francisco

Acquisition Editor

Douglas Paterson

Development Editor

Chaitanya Apte

Technical Editors

Alfred John

Kartikey Pandey

Indexer

Hemangini Bari

Editorial Team Leader

Aanchal Kumar

Project Team Leader

Lata Basantani

Project Coordinator

Jovita Pinto

Proofreader

Aaron Nash

Graphics

Geetanjali Sawant

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Chang Sau Sheong has more than 15 years experience in software application development and has spent much of his career working on Web and Internet-based applications. He started up elipva, an e-business software company, and was the Vice President of Product Engineering as well as Chief Architect. Subsequently he was Director of Software Development for Welcome Real-time, a bank loyalty software company, Engineering Director for Yahoo! Southeast Asia and Chief Technology Officer for Garena Online, an online game publishing company. He is currently the Director of the Applied Cloud Computing Lab in HP Labs Singapore, the research arm of Hewlett Packard, leading a team of engineers to implement cloud computing solutions.

Sau Sheong frequently writes for technical magazines and journals, including Java Report, Java World, and Dr. Dobb’s Journal. He is a passionate programmer who contributes to open source projects in various technologies including Ruby and Java. He has a wide range of experience in web application development on the Internet and mobile devices. His first book was ‘Ruby on Rails Mashup Projects’ in 2008, also published by Packt Publishing.

Sau Sheong hails from tropical Malaysia but spent most of his adult and working life in sunny Singapore, where he shares his spare time between enthusiastically writing software and equally enthusiastically playing Nintendo Wii with his wife and son. He has a Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering, a Masters degree in Commercial Law, and is a certified international arbitrator.

Acknowledgement

Firstly, many thanks to Douglas Paterson who agreed to this second book project, the book...