This is terribly, embarrassingly basic at the moment, but I just wanted
to get it out there.
Acts As Watchable allows you to subscribe to email updates to your
models. Basically, it sends an email out to subscribers oBBn
‘after_update’.
Here’s what’s already functional:
function to create/drop habtm table for migrations
ModelObject.add_watch(user), ModelObject.remove_watch(user)
extremely little email configuration 
working unit test
Here’s what’s in the works:
track the last time the user saw updates to this, so only send an email
once (right now, an email is sent every time something is updated)
configure which fields need to be changed in order for an email to be
sent out
Stumbling blocks (suggestions welcome):
Email configuration. I’d like to configure email properties (like the
“from” address) globally, which doesn’t jive so much with the acts_as
model-centric way of doing things.
URLs for the email. Because I’m in the model, I can’t use url_for (and
even then, I have to ask for a controller and action in config). It’d be
nice if I could have a “watch” controller that just takes the id of the
watch and finds the corresponding object, but can you even have
controllers in an acts_as plugin?
Please try this out and give me feedback, any kind of feedback is good.
Is this something people actually want at all? is there a way to do
configuration/controllers in an acts_as plugin? what would you like to
see implemented before you actually use this in your own site?