Clerk
Clerk adds the following attributes to your ActiveRecord objects
- creator
- updater
Used in conjunction with the sentient_user
gem,
Clerk will automatically update these attributes using before_create
and before_update
ActiveRecord callback methods
The gem assumes the following:
- you have a User model
- you have a
current_user
method on your ApplicationController - you have 2 columns which are foreign keys of users.id
- the gems uses the following as defaults
created_by_id
andupdated_by_id
- the gems uses the following as defaults
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'clerk'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself as:
$ gem install clerk
Then follow the directions under Setup
Version Notes
- Use
0.2.x
for rails 4 - Use
0.3.x
for rails 5
Setup
Step 1: include the sentient_user
SentientUser module on your User /app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
include SentientUser
endis
Step 2: include the sentient_user
SentientController module on your ApplicationController /app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
protect_from_forgery
include SentientController
# ...
end
Step 3: Add the track_who_does_it
macro to any ActiveRecord models that have created_by_id
and updated_by_id
database columns
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
track_who_does_it
end
We probably want our User model to track_who_does_it
as well
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
include SentientUser
track_who_does_it
end
You can optionally override the default column names created_by_id
and updated_by_id
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
track_who_does_it :creator_foreign_key => "user_id", :updater_foreign_key => "updater_id"
end
Usage
Once you have finished the Setup and restarted your rails server your models should automatically update the creator and the updater attributes after being saved.
Since your models have the creator and updater attributes you can display these in any views
Updated by <%= @post.updater.full_name %> at <%= l(@post.updated_at, :format => :long) %>
Since we are using sentient_user
you can also set the updater or creator in tests or rake tasks
user = User.find(5150)
user.make_current # now all models marked as track_who_does_it will save with this user tracked
Post.create!(:title => "New Post")
Post.last.creator == user # => true
Configuration
In case you need to customize Clerk. Just create config/initializers/clerk.rb
and set up your configuration:
Clerk.configure do |config|
config.silence_warnings = true | false # Defaults: false (true in test env)
config.logger = MyCustomLogger.new() # Defaults: Rails.logger
end
Resources used in the development of this gem
- http://ryanbigg.com/2011/01/extending-active-record/
- http://charlotteruby.org/gem_workshop_tutorial/
- http://yehudakatz.com/2009/11/12/better-ruby-idioms/
- http://www.cowboycoded.com/2011/01/31/developing-is_able-or-acts_as-plugins-for-rails/
- http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Callbacks.html
- https://github.com/bokmann/sentient_user
- https://robots.thoughtbot.com/mygem-configure-block