blog-review

name	blog-review
description	Create a new review on blog.carter2099.com (Book, Movie, Show, Product, or Video Game). Collaboratively draft content, preview it, then publish — triggering subscriber email notifications via the Rails app.

blog-review

Create a new review on the blog. This is a collaborative workflow — help the user draft and polish their review before publishing. Never publish without showing the user exactly what will be posted and getting explicit confirmation.

Required input

• title (string): the title of the thing being reviewed
• review_type (string): one of Book, Movie, Show, Product, Video Game
• rating (float): 0 to 5 (decimals like 3.5 are fine)

Conditionally required

• author (string): required if review_type is Book

Optional input

• content (string): markdown review body — may be rough draft, notes, or polished text. Reviews can also have no body text (just title + rating).
• main_image_url (URL): a primary/cover image for the review
• image_urls (list of URLs): additional images to embed in the review body

Workflow

1. Draft and polish

The user may provide anything from a finished review to rough notes, or just a title and rating with no body. Work with them:

• If they provide rough content, help polish it while preserving their voice
• If they want a text-free review (just rating), that's fine — content is optional
• Go back and forth as many times as needed

2. Preview — MANDATORY before publishing

When ready, display the exact content that will be published:

**Title:** <title>
**Type:** <review_type>
**Rating:** <rating>/5
**Author:** <author, or omit line if not a book>
**Main image:** <filename if provided, or "None">
**Filename:** <Title-With-Hyphens>.md (or "No body text" if no content)

---

<full markdown content exactly as it will be written, or "(no body text)">

---

**Additional images:** <list, or "None">

Ask: "Ready to publish? This will notify all subscribers via email."

Do not proceed without explicit confirmation. If the user wants changes, make them and show the preview again.

3. Publish

Once confirmed, execute these steps in order:

3a. Download images (if any)

For each image URL (main_image and additional images):

curl -fSL "<url>" -o /home/carter/blog/blog/app/assets/images/<filename>

Then copy all images to public:

docker exec blog-web-1 bin/rails runner "PostsHelper.load_post_images"

3b. Write the markdown file (if content provided)

Write the markdown content to /home/carter/blog/blog/app/reviews/<Title-With-Hyphens>.md.

• Replace spaces in filename with hyphens
• Convert any Obsidian image syntax ![[file.jpg]] to ![file.jpg](/assets/file.jpg)
• Image references in markdown should use ![alt text](/assets/filename.jpg)

3c. Create the database record

Build the rails runner command with all required fields:

docker exec blog-web-1 bin/rails runner "Review.create!(title: '<title>', review_type: ReviewType.find_by!(name: '<review_type>'), rating: <rating>, author: <author_or_nil>, path: <path_or_nil>, main_image: <main_image_filename_or_nil>)"

This triggers after_create_commit :notify_subscribers which enqueues NotifySubscribersJob → sends emails to all confirmed subscribers.

3d. Verify

docker exec blog-web-1 bin/rails runner "r = Review.last; puts \"Created: #{r.title} (id: #{r.id}, #{r.formatted_rating})\"; puts \"Subscribers notified: #{Subscriber.confirmed.count}\""

Report the review ID, URL (https://blog.carter2099.com/reviews/<id>), and number of subscribers who will be notified.

Review types and their IDs

These are seeded in the review_types table:

Name	Notes
Book	author field required
Movie
Show
Product
Video Game

Always use ReviewType.find_by!(name: '<type>') — never hardcode IDs.

Important notes

• The blog container is blog-web-1. If it's not running, tell the user — don't try to start it (use /deploy-app blog for that).
• The path stored in the database must be the container path (/rails/app/reviews/...), not the host path.
• Escape single quotes in title, author, and content when passing to rails runner.
• Reviews have no frontmatter — just plain markdown content.
• main_image stores just the filename (e.g. cover.jpg), not a full path.
• If rails runner fails, clean up any written files and report the error.
• The rating field is a float — 4 and 4.0 both work, as does 3.5.

Markdown formatting rules

The blog uses Redcarpet with hard_wrap: true, which changes how the parser handles certain constructs. Follow these rules when writing markdown content:

• Blank line before lists. A list must have a blank line separating it from the preceding paragraph — otherwise Redcarpet won't parse it as <ul>/<li> and will instead render it as literal text with <br> line breaks.
• Blank line before headings (##, ###, etc.) — same rule as lists.
• Spaces, not tabs, for nested list indentation. Use 4 spaces for each nesting level. Tabs cause Redcarpet to treat the indented content as a code block.
• Inline backtick code (`code`) renders with a subtle background only (it's now display: inline as of 2025-06-19). Fenced code blocks (```) are for block-level code.