Ruby, Rails, and Randomness

ActsAsViewable is plugin that allows you to track page and asset views in your Rails application. For example, you can use it to track how many times a page is visited or how many times a particular image is viewed.

Trac: http://trac.intridea.com/trac/public/wiki/ActsAsViewable

Subversion repository: http://svn.intridea.com/svn/public/acts_as_viewable

Installation:

script/plugin install http://svn.intridea.com/svn/public/acts_as_viewable

OR

cd vendor/plugins
svn co http://svn.intridea.com/svn/public/acts_as_viewable

Create the tables where views will be tracked:

class CreateViewings < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    create_table :viewings do |t|
      t.column :viewable_type,  :string
      t.column :viewable_id,    :integer
      t.column :views,          :integer,   :default => 0
      t.column :created_at,     :datetime, :null => false
      t.column :updated_at,     :datetime
    end
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :viewings
  end
end

Set the objects you want to track views for:

class SomeAsset < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_viewable
end

Now you can increment views for these objects wherever you need to. For example in the show action of our SomeAssetController:

class SomeAssetController < ApplicationController
  def show
    @some_asset = SomeAsset.find(params[:id])
    @some_asset.increment_views
  end
end

To get the number of views:

@some_asset.views