open_source

During the Christmas break me and Mike were discussing a new feature at Product Hunt. The feature required scheduling an ActiveJobs when a user signs up, votes or submits a comment.

There is SignUp object which handles user registration. So scheduling a new background job there is quite simple:

module SignUp  
  # ... handle user sign up

  def after_sign_up(user)
    WelcomeEmailWorker.perform_later(user)
    WelcomeTweetWorker.perform_later(user)
    SyncProfileImageWorker.perform_later(user)
    NewFancyFeatureWorker.perform_later(user) # <- new worker
  end
end  

Unfortunately after_sign_up method was becoming quite large ☹️
Now imagine having to add NewFancyFeatureWorker to 10 other places 😫

Those issues pushed us to create a simple wrapper around ActiveJobs, which we call KittyEvents.

Now in SignUp there is just one trigger for an "event":

module SignUp  
  # ... handle user sign up

  def after_sign_up(user)
    ApplicationEvents.trigger(:user_signup, user)
  end
end  

And there is a central place, where events are mapped to ActiveJobs Workers:

# config/initializers/application_events.rb
module ApplicationEvents  
  extend KittyEvents

  event :user_signup, [
    WelcomeEmailWorker,
    WelcomeTweetWorker,
    SyncProfileImageWorker,
    NewFancyFeatureWorker, # <- new worker
  ]

  # ... other events
end  

When an event is triggered, all ActiveJobs Workers for this events are scheduled and executed.

Another bonus, is when using KittyEvents, you only make a single Redis call to trigger any number of events. This shaves off precious milliseconds when using KittyEvents in request.

My last blog post - Dealing with form objects, got me thinking about form objects. I also had a 12 hours flight to San Francisco, where I was meeting my teammates at Product Hunt.

During that flight, I went back and checked all of my custom form implementations. I gathered them together in a folder and started combining and extracting the common parts. By the end of the flight I almost had what now is MiniForm. (I had to change its name several times since I'm not very good with names and most of the decent names are not available).

MiniForm allows the following code:

 class RegistrationForm  
  include ActiveModel::Model

  attr_reader :user, :account

  attr_accessor :first_name, :last_name, :email, :name, :plan, :terms_of_service

  # user validation
  validates :first_name, presence: true
  validates :last_name, presence: true
  validates :email, presence: true, email: true

  # account validation
  validates :account_name, presence: true

  # form custom validation
  validates :plan, inclusion: {in AccountPlan::VALUES}
  validates :terms_of_service, acceptance: true

  # ensure uniqueness
  validate :ensure_unique_user_email
  validate :ensure_unique_account_name

  def initialize
    @user    = User.new
    @account = Account.new owner: @user
  end

  def update(attributes)
    attributes.each do |name, value|
      public_send "#{name}=", value
    end

    if valid? & user.update(user_attributes) && account.update(account_attributes)
      account.users << user
      AccountWasCreated.perform_later(account)
    else
      false
    end
  end

  private

  def ensure_unique_user_email
    errors.add :email, 'already taken' if User.where(email: email).any?
  end

  def ensure_unique_account_name
    errors.add :name, 'already taken' if Account.where(name: name).any?
  end

  def user_attributes
    {first_name: first_name, last_name: last_name, email: email}
  end

  def account_attributes
    {plan: plan, name: name}
  end
end  

To become:

class RegistrationForm  
  include MiniForm::Model

  # `model` delegates attributes to models 
  # and copies the validations from them
  model :user, attributes: %i(first_name last_name email), save: true
  model :account, attributes: %i(name plan), save: true

  attributes :terms_of_service

  validates :plan, inclusion: {in AccountPlan::VALUES}
  validates :terms_of_service, acceptance: true

  def initialize
    @user    = User.new
    @account = Account.new owner: @user
  end

  # `update` calls `perform` if model is valid
  # and models are saved
  def perform
    account.users << user
    AccountWasCreated.perform_later(account)
  end
end