Merit

Merit adds reputation behavior to Rails apps in the form of Badges, Points, and Rankings.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Badges
  • Creating Badges
    • Example
  • Defining Rules
    • Examples
  • Other Actions
  • Displaying Badges
• Points
  • Defining Rules
    • Examples
  • Other Actions
  • Displaying Points
• Rankings
  • Defining Rules
    • Examples
  • Displaying Rankings
• How merit finds the target object
• Getting Notifications
• I18n
• Uninstalling Merit

Installation

1. Add gem 'merit' to your Gemfile
2. Run rails g merit:install. This creates several migrations.
3. Run rails g merit MODEL_NAME (e.g. user). This creates a migration and adds has_merit to MODEL_NAME.
4. Run rake db:migrate
5. Define badges in config/initializers/merit.rb
6. Configure reputation rules for your application in app/models/merit/*

Badges

Creating Badges

Create badges in config/initializers/merit.rb

Merit::Badge.create! takes a hash describing the badge:

• :id integer (required)
• :name this is how you reference the badge (required)
• :level (optional)
• :description (optional)
• :custom_fields hash of anything else you want associated with the badge (optional)

Example

# config/initializers/merit.rb

Rails.application.reloader.to_prepare do
  Merit::Badge.create!(
    id: 1,
    name: "year-member",
    description: "Active member for a year",
    custom_fields: { difficulty: :silver }
  )
end

Defining Rules

Badges can be automatically given to any resource in your application based on rules and conditions you create. Badges can also have levels, and be permanent or temporary (A temporary badge is revoked when the conditions of the badge are no longer met).

Badge rules / conditions are defined in app/models/merit/badge_rules.rb initialize block by calling grant_on with the following parameters:

• 'controller#action' a string similar to Rails routes (required)
• :badge_id or :badge these correspond to the :id or :name of the badge respectively
• :level corresponds to the :level of the badge
• :to the object's field to give the badge to. It needs a variable named @model in the associated controller action, like @post for posts_controller.rb or @comment for comments_controller.rb.
  • Can be a method name, which called over the target object should retrieve the object to badge. If it's :user for example, merit will internally call @model.user to find who to badge.
  • Can be :itself, in which case it badges the target object itself (@model).
  • Is :action_user by default, which means current_user.
• :model_name define the model's name if it's different from the controller's (e.g. the User model for the RegistrationsController).
• :multiple whether or not the badge may be granted multiple times. false by default.
• :temporary whether or not the badge should be revoked if the condition no longer holds. false -badges are kept for ever- by default.
• &block can be one of the following:
  • empty / not included: always grant the badge
  • a block which evaluates to boolean. It recieves the target object as parameter (e.g. @post if you're working with a PostsController action).
  • a block with a hash composed of methods to run on the target object and expected method return values

Examples

# app/models/merit/badge_rules.rb
grant_on 'comments#vote', badge_id: 5, to: :user do |comment|
  comment.votes.count == 5
end

grant_on ['users#create', 'users#update'], badge: 'autobiographer', temporary: true do |user|
  user.name? && user.email?
end

If your controller is under a namespace other than root (example: Api::ModelController) then for merit to find your object automatically you must specify the model class and not forget that your action is of the form namespace/models#action.

See an example of a Post model that belongs to user:

grant_on 'api/posts#create', badge: 'first-post', model_name: 'Post', to: :user do |post|
  post.user.posts.count >= 1
end

Other Actions

# Check granted badges
current_user.badges # Returns an array of badges

# Grant or remove manually
current_user.add_badge(badge.id)
current_user.rm_badge(badge.id)

# Get related entries of a given badge
Merit::Badge.find(1).users

Displaying Badges

Meritable models have a badges method which returns an array of associated badges:

<ul>
  <% current_user.badges.each do |badge| %>
    <li><%= badge.name %></li>
  <% end %>
</ul>

Points

Defining Rules

Points are given to "meritable" resources on actions-triggered, either to the action user or to the method(s) defined in the :to option. Define rules on app/models/merit/point_rules.rb:

score accepts:

• score
  • Integer
  • Proc, or any object that accepts call which takes one argument, where the target object is passed in and the return value is used as the score.
• :on action as string or array of strings (like controller#action, similar to Rails routes)
• :to method(s) to send to the target object (who should be scored?)
• :model_name (optional) to specify the model name if it cannot be guessed from the controller. (e.g. model_name: 'User' for RegistrationsController, or model_name: 'Comment' for Api::CommentsController)
• :category (optional) to categorize earned points. default is used by default.
• &block
  • empty (always scores)
  • a block which evaluates to boolean (recieves target object as parameter)

Examples

# app/models/merit/point_rules.rb
score 10, to: :post_creator, on: 'comments#create', category: 'comment_activity' do |comment|
  comment.title.present?
end

score 20, on: [
  'comments#create',
  'photos#create'
]

score 15, on: 'reviews#create', to: [:reviewer, :reviewed]

proc = lambda { |photo| PhotoPointsCalculator.calculate_score_for(photo) }
score proc, on: 'photos#create'

Other Actions

# Score manually
current_user.add_points(20, category: 'Optional category')
current_user.subtract_points(10, category: 'Optional category')

# Query awarded points since a given date
score_points = current_user.score_points(category: 'Optional category')
score_points.where("created_at > '#{1.month.ago}'").sum(:num_points)

Displaying Points

Meritable models have a points method which returns an integer:

<%= current_user.points(category: 'Optional category') %>

If category left empty, it will return the sum of points for every category.

<%= current_user.points %>

Rankings

A common ranking use case is 5 stars. They are not given at specified actions like badges, a cron job should be defined to test if ranks are to be granted.

Defining Rules

Define rules on app/models/merit/rank_rules.rb:

set_rank accepts:

• :level ranking level (greater is better, Lexicographical order)
• :to model or scope to check if new rankings apply
• :level_name attribute name (default is empty and results in 'level' attribute, if set it's appended like 'level_#{level_name}')

Check for rules on a rake task executed in background like:

task cron: :environment do
  Merit::RankRules.new.check_rank_rules
end

Examples

set_rank level: 2, to: Committer.active do |committer|
  committer.branches > 1 && committer.followers >= 10
end

set_rank level: 3, to: Committer.active do |committer|
  committer.branches > 2 && committer.followers >= 20
end

Displaying Rankings

<%= current_user.level %>

How merit finds the target object

Merit fetches the rule’s target object (the parameter it receives) from its :model_name option, or from the controller’s instance variable.

To read it from the controller merit searches for the instance variable named after the singularized controller name. For example, a rule like:

grant_on 'comments#update', badge_id: 1 do |target_object|
  # target_object would be better named comment in this sample
end

Would make merit try to find the @comment instance variable in the CommentsController#update action. If the rule had the :model_name option specified:

grant_on 'comments#update', badge_id: 1, model_name: "Article" do |target_object|
  # target_object would be better named article in this sample
end

Merit would fetch the Article object from the database, found by the :id param sent in that update action.

If none of these methods find the target, Merit will log a no target_obj warning, with a comment to check the configuration for the rule.

Getting Notifications

You can get observers notified any time merit automatically changes reputation in your application.

It needs to implement the update method, which receives as parameter the following hash:

• description, describes what happened. For example: "granted 5 points", "granted just-registered badge", "removed autobiographer badge".
• sash_id, who saw it's reputation changed.
• granted_at, date and time when the reputation change took effect.

Example code (add your observer to app/models or app/observers):

# reputation_change_observer.rb
class ReputationChangeObserver
  def update(changed_data)
    description = changed_data[:description]

    # If user is your meritable model, you can query for it doing:
    user = User.where(sash_id: changed_data[:sash_id]).first

    # When did it happened:
    datetime = changed_data[:granted_at]
  end
end

# In `config/initializers/merit.rb`
config.add_observer 'ReputationChangeObserver'

NOTE: Observers won’t get notified if you grant reputation with direct calls to add_badge or add_point.

I18n

Merit uses default messages with I18n for notify alerts. To customize your app, you can set up your locale file:

en:
  merit:
    granted_badge: "granted %{badge_name} badge"
    granted_points: "granted %{points} points"
    removed_badge: "removed %{badge_name} badge"

Uninstalling Merit

1. Run rails d merit:install
2. Run rails d merit MODEL_NAME (e.g. user)
3. Run rails g merit:remove MODEL_NAME (e.g. user)
4. Run rake db:migrate
5. Remove merit from your Gemfile