Dirty History¶ ↑

WARNING: Dirty History is not intended for public consumption. Use at your own risk.

Dirty History is a simple gem that allows you to keep track of changes to specific fields in your Rails models using the ActiveRecord::Dirty module.

Add dirty_history to your Gemfile:

gem "dirty_history"

Install it using Bundler

bundle install

Generate the Dirty History migration and migrate your database

rails generate dirty_history:migration
rake db:migrate

Dirty History must be set up within the ActiveRecord model (or models) you want to use. Simply include the dirty_history mixing and call the has_dirty_history class method on your model(s), passing the attributes that you would like to track changes to.

For example, assume you want to use Dirty History in your Widget model to keep track of changes to name and price fields as outlined below:

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base

  include DirtyHistory::Mixin
  has_dirty_history :name, :price

 end

You can optionally track the creator of dirty history records by passing a creator proc that will be called when a DirtyHistoryRecord is being saved for your object.

class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base

  include DirtyHistory::Mixin
  has_dirty_history :name, :price, :creator => proc { User.current_user }

end

widget = Widget.last
widget.name
  # => "Box"
widget.name = "Heart Shaped Box"
widget.save
widget.dirty_history_records
  # => returns all changes to the widget

dirty_history = widget.dirty_history_records.last
dirty_history.old_value
  # => "Thing"
dirty_history.new_value
  # => "Heart Shaped Box"

user   = User.find(123)
widget.dirty_history_records.created_by(user)
  # => returns all changes to the widget performed by the specified user

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  creates_dirty_history
end

user = User.find(123)
user.dirty_history_records
  # => returns changes made by the specified user

Now, suppose you want to access all of a user’s changes to objects of type Foo:

user = User.find(123)
user.dirty_history_records.for_asset_type("Foo")
  # => returns the user's changes made only objects of type Foo

# TODO: add more documentation

• Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn’t been implemented or the bug hasn’t been fixed yet

• Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn’t requested it and/or contributed it

• Fork the project

• Start a feature/bugfix branch

• Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution

• Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don’t break it in a future version unintentionally.

• Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.

Copyright © 2011 Gavin Todes. See LICENSE.txt for further details.