Rails Plugin: Acts As Follower

Followers are the new friends. Apps such as Twitter and Github have effectively enabled virtual stalking within their apps. So how can you do this easily without wasting time with your own join tables? Acts_As_Follower to the rescue!

Install

Usage

A service like Twitter would have a user model, which would be both a follower and followable…

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    acts_as_follower
    acts_as_followable
  end
  
  # In the console...
  user1.follow(user2)
  
  # Get the users following user2
  user2.followers # => # Array containing user1
  
  # Get the users user1 is following
  user1.following # => Array containing user2
  
  # Check following
  user1.following?(user2) # => true
  user2.following?(user1) # => false
  
  # Stop following
  user1.stop_following(user2)
  

Acts_As_Follower allows heterogeneous follow relationships too, so a user could follow repositories and users, say, in an application like Github.

This plugin saved me a lot of time during the start-up of a recent project, and it hopefully should do the same for you. For more usage examples, see the README.