A great way to extend rails functionality is by using Rails gems. These libraries are easily plugged into existing ruby projects and allow for quick integration of complicated features.

I noticed that for my side projects that are still growing, that I would like to be notified whenever a new user signs up, so I can reach out to them to get feedback on the product.

Here I will go through step by step on how I created Angora, email notifications on model creation

The art of naming

Firstly, select a name. This name should be unique to other gems so other developers can easily find it. Check Github and RubyGems to verify that there aren’t any other gems with the same name.

RubyGems provides a excellent table for describing how to name a gem.

Creating the gem

We are going to use the bundler tool to generate the gem files. Since my gem name is angora, I type this in:

``` console Creating gem with bundler $ bundle gem angora create angora/Gemfile create angora/Rakefile create angora/LICENSE.txt create angora/README.md create angora/.gitignore create angora/angora.gemspec create angora/lib/angora.rb create angora/lib/angora/version.rb

# Upload to github

Lets add this project to github and start tracking it with git.  This will also give us a homepage to link to, which we will get to next.

``` console
  $ git init
  $ git add -all
  $ git commit -m "first commit!"
  $ git remote add origin <git url>
  $ git push origin master

The basics

Now we are going to edit the basic attributes of angora. Open up angora.gemspec to see all of the generated defaults. Change all of the attributes to what is relevant for your project.

``` ruby angora.gemspec spec.authors = [“Kevin Coleman”] spec.email = [“[email protected]”] spec.summary = %q{TODO: Get notifications when a new object is created.} spec.description = %q{TODO: Angora hooks into ActiveMailer to send off an email notification with all of the spec.homepage = “https://github.com/KevinColemanInc/angora”

# Dependencies

Because this gem depends on active record, I need to add that as a dependency to the gem.  We will also be using rspec to test the gem.

``` ruby angora.gemspec
  spec.add_dependency "activerecord"
  spec.add_development_dependency "rspec"
  spec.add_development_dependency "sqlite3"

and I need to require it in the gem file, so it loads with the gem.

``` ruby lib/angora.rb require “active_record”

# First Test

Following TDD practices, we must first write our tests before we start writing feature code.  I am going to use rspec.

``` ruby spec/lib/angora_spec.rb linenos:true
  require 'spec_helper'

  describe "angora_spec" do
    context "send notification" do
      it "should send a notification message" do
        User.create(name: "Kevin")
      end
    end
  end

This will verify that a notification has been sent when the user is created. For this test to run, we will need to create the spec_helper.rb file.

``` ruby spec/lib/angora_spec.rb linenos:true require ‘angora’

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(:adapter => “sqlite3”, :database => File.dirname(FILE) + “/angora.sqlite3”)

load File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/support/schema.rb’ load File.dirname(FILE) + ‘/support/models.rb’

`require 'angora'` will add references to our gem and active_record that our tests will need to run.  We will need a database to test our gem against, so I am establishing a connection to a local sqlite3 database.

After the database is loaded, we will need to load up a schema file so rails can use that schema.

```ruby spec/support/schema.rb
  ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
    self.verbose = false

    create_table :users, :force => true do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.timestamps
    end
  end

Create the schema file like above. Because this is just for testing, I am only creating one model and only giving it one attribute, name.

We will also have to create the user model class.

```ruby spec/support/schema.rb class Post < ActiveRecord::Base

end ```