Books With Friends

Description

This is a week-and-a-half long final project for App Academy. This project was actually conceived long before I began the a/A curriculum, on a Bloomberg chat with a friend.
Somewhere between arguing over which authors were better and when I could borrow what, we decided a better inventory solution was needed. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I began this course that I really knew how to do any of it, or had time to do any of it.

Technology

The site is built mostly with Backbone.js but also Rails (Heroku hosted) on the backend. It is a work in progress (including this readme file!) and there is much left to do. After this course is over, please feel free to contribute!

User Authentication

Currently authentication is done manually in Rails. I would love to incorporate OmniAuth and devise in the future when I have more time, and have caught up on some sleep.

Models

Below is a listing of the Rails models I used. Descriptions are brief - I'll add more verbosity later.

• Users

  Users are the base model for the site.

• Bookshelves

  Bookshelves belong to users.

• Books

  Books currently belong to bookshelves, but see the TODO section. Going to re-work this. One book model per physical book supposedly in existence.

• Friendship

  Two way friendships only (if you add one, also add the other)

• Rentals

  Two users, the owner and borrower. Status information.

API

Google is integral! Everything is google: the suggestion engine, the searching, the images. Praise the Google.

How it works

Splash Page

• The login page also serves as the
• Section to sign up
• Footer with links to about/contact pages

User show pages

• Basic show page for users (their home page)
  • Starts with the library, #/ is the user's library

TODOS

Basic Stuff

• After hitting the add bookshelf button, set the focus to the search box
• When moving from Library view to search view, maintain the state of the shelf index
• Make an alert section that works.
• Pre-populate typeahead when searching with existing book terms. Get only real words Maybe add another controller for this.
• Add the add bookshelf button to the search view.
• Add badges to bookshelves when adding books to them.

Styling

Styling sucks obviously. Even the somewhat acceptable login page is blatantly plagiarized from airbnb. But it looks nice though.

• Friends listing can be beefed up enormously and styled. Much of this has to do with better user modeling/auth though.

Larger Features

• Use subviews for the rental request page instead of re-rendering the whole page.
• Change model structure so that books belong directly to a user instead of through a bookshelf.
• Rental Request Functionality
  • Allow users to cancel requests
  • Allow users to reject requests
  • Allow users to change the due-date on approval, and extend/change the due date of books lent out.
  • Be able to handle multiple copies of the same book.
  • Make search results aware of the rentals collection.
  • Add waiting lists.
• Better book deletion. Also bookshelf deletion (handling deleting bookshelves with existing books, or with books that are still out on loan).
• Infinite scrolling for search results.
• Move books user has borrowed onto a separate, special shelf.
• Clean up unused routes/controllers
• Use custom routes instead of just the general update route to change status on rental requests.
• Devise, OmniAuth, making the login page https. Add the whole searching for friends thing. Currently the site should be called books-with-friends-that-you-add-on-the-backend.
• Add jquery-ui to make books draggable (dragging onto bookshelves to add for instance).