Posted onDec 3, 2023 • Originally published atcarlosmv.hashnode.dev onNov 20, 2023

Building A Visitor Tracker with Rails

In this article, we are going to build a visitor tracker app using Rails. The app will intercept the requests and show information like the client's IP, URL, path, and request method.

Requirements

Ruby installed
Rails installed

Creating a new Rails project.

First, we need to create a new rails project.

rails new visitor-tracker

Creating the model, database, controllers, and routes.

rails g resource tracker

We go todb/migrate/<timestamp>create_trackers.rb to define the attributes of thetracker table. There will be eight attributes: IP address, request URL, port, path, method, browser, OS, time and the service name.

class CreateTrackers < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.0]  def change    create_table :trackers do |t|      t.timestamps      t.string :ip_address      t.string :request_url      t.integer :request_port      t.string :request_path      t.string :request_method      t.string :browser_type      t.datetime :request_time    end  endend

We run the following command in our terminal, to migrate the table:

rails db:migrate

We go toapp/controllers/tracker_controller.rb and create the functions to retrieve all the entries in the database, and to store the request info in the database.

Index

  def index        @trackers = Tracker.all        render json: @trackers    end

Show

 def show        @tracker = Tracker.find(params[:id])        render json: @tracker    end

Create

   def create        @tracker = Tracker.create(            ip_address: params[:ip_address],            request_url: params[:request_url],            request_port: params[:request_port],            request_path: params[:request_path],            request_method: params[:request_method],            browser_type: params[:browser_type],            request_time: params[:request_time],        )        render json: @tracker    end

Completetrackers_controllers.rbfile.

class TrackersController < ApplicationController    def index        @trackers = Tracker.all        render json: @trackers    end    def show        @tracker = Tracker.find(params[:id])        render json: @tracker    end    def create        @tracker = Tracker.create(            ip_address: params[:ip_address],            request_url: params[:request_url],            request_port: params[:request_port],            request_path: params[:request_path],            request_method: params[:request_method],            browser_type: params[:browser_type],            request_time: params[:request_time],        )        render json: @tracker    end    end

Indb/seed.rb we created a record to display when we make the GET request.

tracker_1 = Tracker.create(ip_address: "127.0.0.1", request_url: 'http://localhost:8000', request_port: 8000, request_path: "/",request_method: "GET")

Then we run the following command to apply the changes.

rails db:seed

Now, let's start our server and see if it can show the data.

rails server

We navigate tolocalhost:port/trackers and we should see the following response in the browser or HTTP client:

Adding a middleware

We create a new folder,lib/middleware and create thelib/middleware/visitor_tracker file.

module Middleware    class VisitorTracker      def initialize(app)        @app = app      end      def call(env)        request = ActionDispatch::Request.new(env)        Tracker.create(ip_address: request.ip,         request_url: request.original_url, request_port: request.port, request_path: request.path,        request_method: request.request_method)        @app.call(env)      end    end  end

Here, we create our middleware, create theVisitorTracker class and create two methods, initialize and call.

In the call method, we create an instance of theActionDispatch::Request class and then, create a new record in the database with the request information every time the middleware is executed.

Then, we go toconfig/application.rb file to declare our middleware.

require_relative "boot"require_relative "../lib/middleware/visitor_tracker"require "rails/all"Bundler.require(*Rails.groups)module Visitor  class Application < Rails::Application    config.load_defaults 7.0    config.middleware.use Middleware::VisitorTracker  endend

Here we use theconfig.middleware.use method and pass the Middleware module and theVisitorTracker class. Rails will execute this middleware just before your application is called.

Now, to create a full-stack app, we need to go toconfig/routes.rb and paste the following code.

Rails.application.routes.draw do  resources :trackers  root "trackers#index"  get "/trackers", to: "trackers#index"end

Then, we need to go to theapp/controllers/trackers_controllers.rb file and remove the coderender json: @trackers from the index function. It should look like this:

def index        @trackers = Tracker.allend

Next, we go to theapp/views/trackers folder and create theapp/views/trackers/index.html.erb file.

<!DOCTYPE html><html>    <head>        <title>Visitor Tracker</title>        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1">        <%= csrf_meta_tags %>        <%= csp_meta_tag %>        <%= stylesheet_link_tag "index", "data-turbo-track": "reload" %>        <%= javascript_importmap_tags %>    </head>    <h1>Visitor Tracker</h1>    <table>        <tr>            <th>IP Address </th>                          <th>Request URL </th>                                 <th>Request Port </th>              <th>Request Path </th>              <th>Request Method </th>        </tr>        <% @trackers.each do |tracker| %>        <tr>            <td><%= tracker.ip_address %></td>                     <td><%= tracker.request_url %></td>                 <td><%= tracker.request_port %></td>            <td><%= tracker.request_path %></td>            <td><%= tracker.request_method %></td>        </tr>        <% end %>    </table></html>

We navigate tolocalhost:port/ and we should see the following response in the browser or HTTP client:

Next, we create theapp/assets/stylesheets/index.css file and paste the following code.

table {    border-collapse: collapse;    margin-bottom: 1rem;  }  th,  td {    padding: 0.5rem;    border: 1px solid #ccc;  }  th {    text-align: left;  }  td {    text-align: left;  }  .column-gap-10 {    column-gap: 10px;  }

Conclusion

In this article, we learned about how to build a visitor tracker with Rails and how to create custom middleware. With this app, we can see the activity of our applications.

The source code ishere.

Thank you for taking the time to read this article.

If you have any recommendations about other packages, architectures, how to improve my code, my English, or anything; please leave a comment or contact me throughTwitter, orLinkedIn.