Guest reactions

[MWStudio4]

Hello. As i understand there is no guest likes. At the moment i provide user_id=1 . It would be nice to get user_id nullable. But i don't know if it affects other methods

[antonkomarev]

@MWStudio4 you are right. Current implementation isn't designed for guest likes out of the box.

Passing null to user_id wouldn't solve this task, because it will affect on any other guest users.

I see 3 possible solutions here:

1. When guest likes any models you could save them on the client side or in session, and after successful registration or authentication you can apply this likes one by one.
2. Any guest session should have model Guest with unique identifier, and then Like model should be linked with polymorpic liker instead of user_id. And after registration or authentication you can fetch all Guest model likes and change liker to required User model.
3. Any guest session should have model Guest with unique identifier, and then in Like model you can make user_id nullable and add nullable guest_id. If guest will like model - you will fill guest_id field, and if authenticated user likes model you will fill user_id field. And after registration or authentication you can fetch all Guest model likes and set user_id to required User model id and set null to guest_id fields.

Just don't forget that if you allows guest to like models there could be issues with counters cheating.
I'd prefer first solution because it wouldn't affect on counters and will be visible for the guest only until he will be authenticated.

[MWStudio4]

I see thanks. And surely about cheating. To say the truth I doubt about need of guest likes at the moment. About cheating may be there will be good way to implement rate limit

[antonkomarev]

Some more thoughts for guest reactions:

• Guest Reacter can react to entity and this value should be temporary saved but displayed only for this Reacter.
• If Guest authenticates and we cannot find such reaction from authenticated user in database - we should persist it, otherwise we should delete temporary reaction.

[MWStudio4]

Nice thoughts. Thanks!

[antonkomarev]

Since v6 any model could act as Reacter. That means you can create Guest Eloquent model and make it Reacterable.

After authentication you can collect all guest's reactions and change their reacter_id on authenticated user's reacter id. Just don't forget to check if model was already reacted by user's reacter. Counters of affected reactants should be rebuilt.

[MWStudio4]

Good news! Thank you.

[vlados]

Can someone post example implementation of this?

[antonkomarev]

@vlados it depends from your system requirements and application logic a lot. But simple implementation might look like this one.

Add GuestUser model:

<?php

namespace App;

use Cog\Laravel\Love\Reacterable\Models\Traits\Reacterable;
use Cog\Contracts\Love\Reacterable\Models\Reacterable as ReacterableInterface;

class GuestUser extends Model implements
    ReacterableInterface
{
    use Reacterable;

    protected $table = 'guest_users';
}

When user is visiting your page - you are creating GuestUser model instance and bind it to the session:

$guestUser = GuestUser::create();

Then guest user adding some likes:

$guestUser->viaLoveReacter()->reactTo($goodArticle, 'like');
$guestUser->viaLoveReacter()->reactTo($badArticle, 'dislike');

On successful login you are going though the collection of guest user reactions and adding them to user and then deleting this GuestUser or only his reactions. For this you might store latest GuestUser in User as attribute.

$user = $request->user();
$guestUserReacter = $user->getGuestUser()->viaLoveReacter();
$userReacter = $user->viaLoveReacter();

$reactions = $guestUserReacter->getReactions();
foreach ($reactions as $reaction) {
    $reactable = $reaction->getReactant()->getReactable();
    $reactionTypeName = $reaction->getReactionType()->getName();
    $reactionRate = $reaction->getRate();

    $userReacter->reactTo($reactable, $reactionTypeName, $reactionRate);

    $guestUserReacter->unreactTo($reactable, $reactionTypeName);
}