XMPP with Rails
In the beginning, my blog didn’t have any way to notify me when someone comments on an entry. After a while, I added an ActionMailer class (called Notifier) to email me when a comment is saved. Realizing that this might open up the door for people to spam me, I added some very basic spam checking, looking for certain inappropriate key words through regular expression matching. Maybe some day I’ll actually try and tie-in Spamassassin or something.
Today, I added a couple more advancements in regards to comments. Now, it also sends me an Instant Message through Jabber (XMPP) notifying me of a new comment. I also decided to move the sending of the email and the instant message to its own thread because I noticed some slowness when testing new comments. Now things are fast and smooth again.
Here’s the code I used to make the IM and email happen:
Add this to the Comment model:
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... protected def validate SPAM_REGEXES.each do |r| errors.add("body", "fails SPAM checks") if body.match(r) end end |
Add this to the Comment controller:
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...
if @comment.save
t = Thread.new do
Notifier.deliver_comment_notification(@comment.entry.author, @comment)
begin
# Connect to the server and set presence to available for chat.
client = Jabber::Simple.new('jlg_blog_bot@jabber.org/blog', JABBER_PASSWORD.to_s)
client.deliver(
@comment.entry.author.email,
"You have a new comment on your blog entry titled '#{@comment.entry.title}'",
:normal
)
sleep(1)
client.disconnect
logger.info "Sent XMPP message about: '#{@comment.entry.title}'"
rescue
logger.warn "Sending of XMPP message failed..."
end
end # new thread
else
# If the comment wasn't saved, it was probably marked as spam
flash[:warn] = "Your comment was not saved. Perhaps it was flagged as spam."
end
... |
You still need to modify the ‘config/environment.rb’ file to include definitions for JABBER_PASSWORD and SPAM_REGEXES.