vote up buttons - Clarification on how to use "thumbs_up" voting gem with Rails 3

Question

I am attempting to implement the thumbs_up voting gem on a Rails 3 app, however the instructions are unclear on the actual implementation. After requiring the gem [gem 'thumbs_up'] and after creating and running the appropriate migration [rails generate thumbs_up && rake db:migrate] the README explains the following:

To cast a vote for a Model you can do the following:
*Shorthand syntax
voter.vote_for(voteable) # Adds a +1 vote
voter.vote_against(voteable) # Adds a -1 vote
voter.vote(voteable, vote) # Adds either a +1 or -1 vote: vote => true (+1), vote => false (-1)

voter.vote_exclusively_for(voteable) # Removes any previous votes by that particular voter, and votes for.
voter.vote_exclusively_against(voteable) # Removes any previous votes by that particular voter, and votes against.*

I've been assuming that the use of 'voter' and 'voteable' in the README example are stand-ins for objects in the app, but the usage is still nebulous to me.

A literal example of what my view, controller, and routes.rb file should look like would be a TREMENDOUS help. I've spent days trying to figure this out!

In my app, I have Users that vote on Posts - of which there are two types - Events and Links. Posts are called using <%= render :partial => @posts %> and each individual post uses as its view "_event.html.erb" or "_link.html.erb" - depending whether it is an event or a link.

Answer 1

Hopefully I can help you out a bit.

The generators should have created a Vote model for you. This is the model that holds all the votes, but that you interact with indirectly through the methods you've described above.

So, for you:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_voter
end

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_voteable
end

That will get you set up with the thumbs_up methods in each of the models.

Then for example, if you have a controller action in PostsController that is linked to from an "up arrow" on your website, you can create a vote for that user for that post.

A view like this:

<%= link_to('vote for this post!', vote_up_post_path(@post), :method => :post) %>

and a routes.rb like this:

resources :posts do
  member do
    post :vote_up
  end
end

And finally, in the controller:

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  def vote_up
    begin
      current_user.vote_for(@post = Post.find(params[:id]))
      render :nothing => true, :status => 200
    rescue ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid
      render :nothing => true, :status => 404
    end
  end
end