# linkshare: A Rails application for shared links

> linkshare is an archived Rails learning project for publishing links, commenting and voting. Its routes reveal a conventional server-rendered…

- HTML page: https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/projects/notes/linkshare/
- Language: en
- Translation (fr): https://antoineboucher.info/CV/blog/fr/projects/notes/linkshare/index.md
- Published: 2026-10-23
- Updated: 2026-10-23
- Author: Antoine Boucher (https://antoineboucher.info/CV/index-en.html)

- Repository: https://github.com/antoinebou12/linkshare
- Inspected revision: 2e223f99a50c07f3e60377f6c3252051b815c468

## Summary

linkshare is an archived Rails learning project for sharing links, commenting and voting. It renders pages on the server and includes account management and an administrative interface.

**Why it exists:** Ruby on Rails web platform featuring asynchronous OpenGraph metadata scrapers and card previews.

**Best fit:** Social bookmarking and rich link curation.

## Use cases

A Ruby on Rails 4.1 social site where signed-in users share links or files, vote, comment and preview pages.

- **Share a link or a file** (Member): LinksController#create saves a Link with title, url and description; the Link model also mounts a CarrierWave FileUploader, and /files/new reuses the same form.
- **Preview a shared page** (Member, Embedly): The feed and link views add embedly-card anchors, and application.js calls embedly('card', …) to render a preview card or tooltip.
- **Vote and comment on links** (Member): PUT /links/:id/like and /dislike use acts_as_votable, and nested /links/:link_id/comments routes attach comments to a link.
- **Search links and users** (Member): Link.search and User.search filter by title or name with LIKE; the feed is paginated five links per page with will_paginate, and user cards show an online indicator.
- **Manage content in /admin** (Administrator): config/routes.rb mounts RailsAdmin at /admin, and the users table has an admin flag.

### Scenario: Posting an article and collecting reactions

1. Start the app as in the README: rails server -p 8080 -b 0.0.0.0, with redis-server running.
2. Sign up at /users/sign_up with a name and the required avatar image.
3. Open /links/new, paste the article URL with a title and description, then submit.
4. On the home feed, hover the title to see the Embedly preview with vote and comment counts.
5. Other members like the link with PUT /links/:id/like and reply under /links/:id/comments.

## Languages (GitHub Linguist bytes)

| Language | % |
| --- | ---: |
| Ruby | 55.29 |
| HTML | 19.55 |
| CSS | 13.28 |
| JavaScript | 11.56 |
| CoffeeScript | 0.32 |

## Features and components

- **Resources and actions** — config/routes.rb maps links to resource actions and nests comments beneath links. Member routes send like and dislike actions to upvote and downvote. The root page is links#index.
- **Accounts and administration** — Devise supplies the account-route surface, and RailsAdmin is mounted under /admin. Controllers and models are separate from the routing file; declaring a route does not show its full authorization or persistence behavior.

## Architecture

Components and connections verified in the repository.

- Browser request → Rails router
- Rails router → Links and comments controllers
- Links and comments controllers → Models and persistence
- Links and comments controllers → Rendered response

```mermaid
flowchart LR
  n0["Browser request"]
  n1["Rails router"]
  n2["Links and comments controllers"]
  n3["Models and persistence"]
  n4["Rendered response"]
  n0 --> n1
  n1 --> n2
  n2 --> n3
  n2 --> n4
```

**One path through the code:** Follow PUT /links/:id/like into the upvote action, then inspect the model operation. This keeps the HTTP action, the user identity and the stored vote from being treated as one indistinguishable step.

## Constraints and checks

Archived dependencies and the exposed admin surface need review before redeployment. The route map alone is not evidence of authorization correctness.

## Files to read

- [config/routes.rb](https://github.com/antoinebou12/linkshare/blob/master/config/routes.rb)
- [Gemfile](https://github.com/antoinebou12/linkshare/blob/master/Gemfile)
- [README.md](https://github.com/antoinebou12/linkshare/blob/master/README.md)