ActionPusher

Pusher users often want to transmit JSON or HTML to the browser upon model events, but models have no business generating either. ActionPusher allows you to render data to Pusher using your existing view templates from an observer or model.

• Rails 3.1
• Pusher gem

gem 'action_pusher', :require => false

Create an initializer at config/initializers/action_pusher.rb such as:

require 'action_pusher'
ActionPusher::Base.view_paths = File.join( Rails.root, 'app/api' )

Ensure that view_paths points to the location where your templates are actually stored. The default is app/views.

Create a directory at app/pushers to store your ActionPusher "controllers".

app/pushers/notification_pusher.rb:

class NotificationPusher < ActionPusher::Base
  def initialize(notification)
    @notification = notification
    event = @notification.event
    channel = @notification.notification_channel.name
    Pushable.push(channel, event, render(template: 'notifications/show'))
  end

  def controller_path; 'notifications'; end
end

Now when I call NotificationPusher.new( notification ) from my model callbacks, observers, what-have-you... my Notification model object is transmitted to Pusher as pretty JSON output from jbuilder!

This gem was inspired by stephan.com's solution to a question on StackOverflow, I just wrapped it up in a gem once I got it working well in production.