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Freeloader - a RubyOnRails Movie Librarian

Posted by Scott Hughes Sun, 11 Sep 2005 18:57:00 GMT

I’ve been working on my own RubyOnRails app for the past week: Freeloader. The idea is sort of like Delicious Library, except it’s web-based and it’s a form of folksonomy. Like Delicious Library, Freeloader will allow you to create a library of all the movies you own and it will track who you’ve lent those movies too and whether or not those movies are overdue. Unlike Delicious Library, friends who you’ve designated as contacts can browse your collection online and request to borrow any movie(s) they see of interest. Registered users can help ‘tag’ movies and rate/review movies or other users. i.e. “I recommend this movie if you like such and such” or “Scott sucks, he never returns my stuff on time”.

My immediate goal is to create a very narrow folksonomy, as in a private install with a private group of friends. The project is open and (much like Typo) your free to install your own version of it to help coordinate your circle of movie-borrowing friends.

I do have a test site setup that anyone can try out. I will nuke the database periodically, so don’t spend much time inputting your library. Right now, the only features that work are registering a new user, searching/adding new movies, adding any existing movie to your own collection, viewing your collection, viewing the collection of any user, and adding/removing ‘friends’. When I’m ready to start using the project regularly, the test site will become ‘invite-only’, though anyone is still free to browse the collections.

Freeloader Demo

If you want to try out the code for yourself, you can browse the source and see other project details at the Trac wiki and svn repository.

Freeloader - Trac

Freeloader - anonymous SVN

If you’d like to contribute anything to the project or need help installing what’s currently there, let me know.

Update - if the test site doesn’t seem to work (i.e. you get an Application Error), just hit refresh a couple of times. For some reason, my fcgi processes are having trouble staying alive on Dreamhost tonight.