Mobilizing Your Rails Application - LA Ruby Conference 2009

Mobilize Your Rails Application
Brendan Lim
e-mail: [email_address]
twitter: @brendanlim

Why care about mobile
There’s an estimated 2.9 billion mobile users
Over 255 million mobile users in the U.S.
In developing nations, a mobile phone is sometimes their only way to connect to the Internet

Some mobile stats (in billions of course)

So, how do we take advantage of this?

Make your application accessible by the majority of web enabled mobile devices devices devices

Keep your users engaged through SMS , MMS and E-Mail E-Mail

Many Mobile Devices Can Access the Real Web From Flickr User Carlos Magaña

One Web Making the same information and services available to all users regardless of the device used Making the same information and services available to all users regardless of the device used

Max resolution?
JavaScript?
Flash?
Connection speed?
Processor speed?
Problems with one web

Mobile Fu Plugin
Can detect if a user is on a mobile device
Ability to add custom styling based on the device’s user agent
Gives you some tools to make the concept of one web easier to achieve

How does one master mobile fu?

Not Like This ...

Maybe Like This ...

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base has_mobile_fu end end

demo. presentlyapp.com iPhone Safari

respond_to do | format | format.html format.mobile end
views/
layouts
application.html.erb
application.mobile.erb
sessions
new.html.erb
new.mobile.erb

<%= mobile_xhtml_doctype %> <html> <head> ... </head> <body> ... </body> </html> </html> ../layouts/ application.mobile.erb http://mobiforge.com/designing/story/comparison-xhtml-mobile-profile-and-xhtml-basic

<?xml version="1.0" charset="UTF-8" ?> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//WAPFORUM//DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" " http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd "> <html> <head> ... </head> <body> ... </body> </html> </html> ../layouts/ application.mobile.erb http://mobiforge.com/designing/story/comparison-xhtml-mobile-profile-and-xhtml-basic

Is the user using a specific device? is_device?( ‘blackberry’ ) Is the user using a mobile device? is_mobile_device? Is the request format currently :mobile ? in_mobile_view?

iPhone foo_ mobilewebkit .css <%= stylesheet_link_tag 'foo' %> Android foo_ mobilewebkit .css BlackBerry foo_ blackberry .css Win Mobile foo_ mobileexplorer .css etc...

What about leveraging other mobile technologies ?

SMS Short Message Service Short Message Service

Keep Users Informed with SMS
Text messages are read by about 94% of their recipients.
Supported by almost all mobile phones out there
Good for quick notifications
Generally limited to 160 characters
Relatively easy to leverage

What tools can we use to send SMS messages from our Rails application?

Clickatell Gem
Paid solution
Uses Clickatell’s API
Currently $0.043 per text message sent within the U.S.
No need to know the recipient’s carrier

api = Clickatell::API.authenticate(' your_api_id ', ' your_username ', ' your_password ') api.send_message(' 5558675309 ', ' Hello from clickatell ') require 'clickatell'

SMS Fu Plugin
Doesn’t cost the sender anything
Leverages ActionMailer to send a text message
You need to know the recipient’s carrier
Not as many supported carriers as Clickatell

Wait, it’s free? So how does it work?

Number: 555-867-5309 5558675309 @ vtext.com Carrier: Verizon

deliver_sms(‘ 5558675309 ’,‘ verizon ’, ‘ hello! ’) class AwesomeController < ApplicationController has_sms_fu end end

Some SMS Fu Carriers Alltell, Ameritech, AT&T, Bell South Mobility, BlueSkyFrog, Boost Mobile, Cellular South, Kajeet, Metro PCS, Powertel, PSC Wireless, Qwest, Southern Link, Spring, Rodgers, Suncom, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile, Verizon Wireless , E-Plus, O2, Orange, Telconica, Vodafone ...

What if I want to add a new carrier called Ruby Mobile ?

carriers: ... ruby_mobile: name: Ruby Mobile value: @txt.rubymobile.com Add the following to .../config/sms_fu.yml deliver_sms(‘ 5558675309 ’,’ ruby_mobile ’, ‘ hello! ’)

Remind Your Users That They May Get Charged from flickr user ‘bowbrick’

MMS Multimedia Message Service Multimedia Message Service

MMS
Can send photo, video, audio or other attachments
Most commonly used for photos
Attachment size limitation generally dependent on device
Multipart MIME

The Problem with Receiving MMS Crap Crap Crap Cat

Well, how can I receive SMS or MMS from my Rails app ?

Short Codes Special numbers that are, you guessed it, short, that can be used to receive SMS or MMS messages from mobile phones. Special numbers that are, you guessed it, short, that can be used to receive SMS or MMS messages from mobile phones.

Short Codes
Also referred to as short numbers
MMS support added in this year
Crazy Expensive
Monthly fees up to $1000/mo
Setup fees close to $5000
Many companies share short codes

Receiving SMS or MMS as an e-mail is another solution and its free and relatively simple

MMS2R Gem
Removes carrier advertising
Eliminates carrier default text
Decodes and extracts intended files from the multipart MIME e-mail
Most major carriers are supported

Retrieve only the intended attachment mms.default_media Retrieve all media files from the MMS mms.media Retrieve only the intended message mms.body Create a new MMS2R object from a TMail object mms = MMS2R::Media.new(email)

require ‘ mms2r ’
class MailReceiver < ActionMailer::Base
def receive (email)
begin
# load the TMail object into an MMS2R::Media object
mms = MMS2R::Media .new(email)
# grab a user on record by the e-mail it was sent from
user = User .find_by_email(mms.from)
# store the body of the mms into a new BlogPost
blog_post = BlogPost .create(: body => mms.body, : user => user,
: title => mms.subject)
# grab the attachment from the mms message
media = mms.default_media
# store the attachment from mms into a BlogPhoto
BlogPhoto .create(: uploaded_data => media, : blog_post => blog_post) if
media.content_type.include?(‘ image ’)
ensure
# cleans up temporary files used for text and attachments
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
mms = MMS2R::Media . new (email)
ensure
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
user = User .find_by_email( mms.from )
ensure
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
blog_post = BlogPost .create(: body => mms.body ,
: user => user, : title => mms.subject )
ensure
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
media = mms. default_media
ensure
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
BlogPhoto .create(: uploaded_data => media , : blog_post => blog_post) if media . content_type .include?(‘ image ’)
ensure
mms.purge
end
end
end

def receive (email)
begin
ensure
mms. purge
end
end
end

Adding new templates for carriers is easy
---
ignore:
image / gif:
- top.gif
- bottom.gif
- middle_img.gif
text / html:
- /< html > s +< head > s +< meta http - equiv = "Content-Type
" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">s+<title>MMS Email</title>/im
transform:
text / plain:
- - / Note:s{1,2}. *? s + message:s{1,2}(. + )$ / m
- "1"
conf/mms.myhelio.com.yml

Mobilizing your Rails app is simple and easy

Mobile Fu http://github.com/brendanlim/mobile-fu/ Clickatell http://clickatell.rubyforge.org/ SMS Fu http://github.com/brendanlim/sms-fu/ MMS2R http://github.com/monde/mms2r/

Questions!

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Mobilizing Your Rails Application - LA Ruby Conference 2009

by Brendan Lim

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