Active Model Pusher

ActiveModel::Pusher makes using Pusher in your app much easier. The gem allows you not to care about naming channels, events and serializing records. ActiveModel::Pusher will do it for you!

Note: to use this gem you need Pusher already working in your app.

Basic Usage

@post = Post.create

PostPusher.new(@post).push!

This will push the following json to Pusher:

channel: 'posts',
event: 'created',
data: { id: 1 }

The original Pusher gem needs 4 things to be triggered: channel, event, data and optional params. They will be discussed below.

Channels

A channel value for a Post model will be one of the following:

1. posts when a record has just been created
2. posts-1 for any other event: updated, destroyed, etc

Customizing channels

Sometimes you might want to have a general channel name - like dashboard - to which you will be pushing several models.

There are two ways to do that.

• Define a channel method in your model:

class Post
  def channel
    "dashboard"
  end
end

• Define a channel method in your pusher:

class PostPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  def channel(event)
    "dashboard"
  end
end

Events

A newly generated pusher will look like this:

# app/pushers/post_pusher.rb
class PostPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  events :created, :updated, :destroyed
end

The events method is a whitelist of events. If you try to push a non-whitelisted event, an exception will be raised:

def publish
  @post = Post.find(1).publish!
  PostPusher.new(@post).push! :published
end

will result in InvalidEventError: 'Event :published is not allowed'.

The three default events can be guessed by the gem automatically, you don't actually have to specify them:

def create
  @post = Post.create
  PostPusher.new(@post).push!
end

The gem will recognize that the record was just created and will set the event to :created

If you have custom actions in your controller - like publish - then you should specify the event manually:

def publish
  @post = Post.find(1).publish!

  PostPusher.new(@post).push! :published
end

This will produce the following (given you whitelisted the published event in your pusher):

channel: 'posts-1',
event: 'published',
data: { id: 1 }

Customizing events

Customizing event names may be useful when you are using a general purpose channel.

Using the example from the Customizing channels section:

class PostPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  def channel(event)
    "dashboard"
  end
end
class CommentPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  def channel(event)
    "dashboard"
  end
end

We then push two different models into the general dashboard channel:

@post = Post.create
@comment = Comment.create

PostPusher.new(@post).push!
CommentPusher.new(@comment).push!

They both will be pushed with the same event created. Depending on your client-side architecture it might be fine, but sometimes you might want to have namespaced events: post-created, comment-created, etc.

You can achieve this by overriding the event(event) method in your pusher:

class PostPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  def event(event)
    "post-#{event.underscore.dasherize}"
  end
end

Data

The data method simply serializes your record.

By default, it will try to serialize the record with the active_model_serializers gem.

If active_model_serializers is not used in your application, it will fallback to the as_json method on your record.

But seriously, just use active_model_serializers.

Params

You can specify additional params when calling the push! method:

def create
  @post = Post.create
  PostPusher.new(@post).push! { socket_id: params[:socket_id] }
end

If you need to specify an event as well, it should go first:

def publish
  @post = Post.publish!
  PostPusher.new(@post).push! :published, { socket_id: params[:socket_id] }
end

A more fancier way of doing the same:

def publish
  @post = Post.publish!
  PostPusher.new(@post).push! :published, params.slice(:socket_id)
end

Creating a new pusher

rails generate pusher Post created published

Will result in:

# app/pushers/post_pusher.rb
class PostPusher < ActiveModel::Pusher
  events :created, :published
end

Notice

This is sort of an alpha version, so things may break. If you have any ideas on improving the gem, you are very welcome to contribute.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'active_model_pusher'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install active_model_pusher

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request