An easy and unobtrusive way to track changes on Active Record models (only tested with Ruby 1.9.2).

This will generate a table named audits. auditrail will save an audit entry each time an audited model changes.

You can find an example application that shows how to use auditrail here.

It has only been tested on rails3, in order to install it do:

gem install auditrail

First run the generator to create the audits table:

rails g auditrail:create

That will create a migration. Now Simply add auditable to your models like this:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  auditable
end

You can define parameter options with a block.

Using for_attributes you select the fields that you want to be audited. For example:

auditable do
  for_attributes "name", "email"
end

This will create an audit entry by each time that the fields name or email change.

Using by_user you control who was the action invoker or fields modifier:

auditable do
  by_user "user"
end

Also, you can call the method by_user with a block as parameter. For example:

auditable do
  by_user do
    "user"
  end
end

This way you may dynamically control what will be saved as the action invoker or fields modifier.

If you want to make changes to the gem, then fork it, and first install bundler:

gem install bundler

Afterwards, install the bundle:

bundle install

Simply run:

rake

Nothing yet.

• Improve the way the changes are stored when the table field length is exceeded.
• Refactor auditrail.rb and its tests.
• Let the implementor configure where to store the audits.
• What the audit table name will be.

• 0.0.4 Fixed validation to check unchanged attributes when updating.

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