BlueVelvet

BlueVelvet is a content management system that uses the Facebook platform as the data store. It allows you to map route actions to Facebook API calls and display the results with partials in your other ages. You can even subclass the controller and create your own actions, using one or more of your Facebook page's plethora of properties.

In The Wild

BlueVelvet can be observed "in the wild" on http://thewonderbars.com. I've also open-sourced the codebase to give an example as to how this gem could be/is being used.

Usage

Add the gem to your Gemfile

gem 'blue_velvet'

Then rebundle

$ bundle install

Generate the Facebook configuration YAML file and edit it with your Facebook App details. If you don't know how to do that, look below in the "Configuration" section.

$ rails generate facebook:config

It should look something like this:

# This is your Facebook configuration file. Put your Facebook app info in this file
# and it will be read by the Rails application.

development:
  app_id:
  secret_key:
  page_id:

test:
  app_id:
  secret_key:
  page_id:

production:
  app_id:
  secret_key:
  page_id:

And finally, add the query to your config/routes.rb:

get "/about" => "facebook/page#description"

If you start up your Rails server, you can now browse to http://localhost:3000/about and expect to see the content in your Facebook page's description!

For more information on the many properties available to you, check out the API documentation.

Configuration

All configuration is taken care of in a file called config/facebook.yml. This is also the file used by Koala, the gem that is actually communicating with the Facebook Graph API, so if you're used to working with that configuration this should be easy for you.

In order to use blue_velvet, you must create a Facebook app on https://developers.facebook.com. Once you do that, obtain the following information from the new app page on the control panel:

App ID/API Key
App Secret
Your Facebook page ID, which can be obtained by visiting your Facebook page and observing the number at the very end of the address bar, right after the "/".

Add that information into your YAML config, and you can begin using blue_velvet in your application.

Background

This project is the result of the work I've done on my band's website, TheWonderBars.com. I didn't want to have to maintain two versions of press data, and since we had an active Facebook page that was chock full of content well before the site was designed and deployed, I considered using Facebook as our main "database", rather than a locally-maintained SQL database of some kind. At this point in time, TheWonderBars.com does not require a database in order to function.

Contributing

All contributions will be examined and considered. Anyone can feel free to make their voice known by contributing to the project. Click the "Fork" button on the top of the screen (register a GitHub account if you don't already have one), create a feature branch, and submit the changes back to me in the form of a pull request.

You must write tests for your feature or bug fix and they must pass.

License

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

blue_velvet

Development

Runtime