ManagedEnum
A ruby gem for adding managed enumerated fields functionality to ActiveRecord models. This code is published under the MIT-LICENSE.
Installation
This gem was developed and tested for rails 3.2.17 on ruby 1.9.3.
gem install managed_enum
Usage
The main method is has_managed_enum. This method takes a symbol (attribute name) as the first argument, and either an array or a hash for the second argument. If you are intending to save the enumerated field as string, send an array of possible key values. If you are intending to save the enumerated field as integer, send a hash containing keys as names (to be used in your code) and values (to be saved in database for faster searching and indexing).
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :age_phase, :name, :status
has_managed_enum :age_phase, {baby: 10, child: 20, young: 30, man: 40, old: 50}
has_managed_enum :status, %w(employed self_employed entrepreneur unemployed)
endNow you are free to use a bunch of useful class and instance methods.
# CLASS METHODS
Person.age_phase_possible_keyvalues
# => {baby: 10, child: 20, young: 30, man: 40, old: 50}
Person.status_possible_keyvalues
# => ["employed", "self_employed", "entrepreneur", "unemployed"]
Person.BABY
# => 10
Person.CHILD
# => 20
Person.EMPLOYED
# => "employed"
Person.SELF_EMPLOYED
# => "self_employed"
Person.age_phase_baby.all
# => Person Load (0.2ms) SELECT "people".* FROM "people" WHERE "people"."age_phase" = 10
Person.status_employed.all
# => Person Load (0.2ms) SELECT "people".* FROM "people" WHERE "people"."status" = "employed"
# INSTANCE METHODS
person = Person.new
person.baby?
# => returns false
person.make_baby
# => 10
person.baby?
# => returns true
person.age_phase
# => returns 10
person.age_phase_as_string
# => returns "baby"
person.employed?
# => returns false
person.make_employed
# => "employed"
person.employed?
# => returns true
person.status
# => returns "employed"
person.status_as_string
# => returns "employed"Contribution
Feel free to contribute for upward compatibility, better coding style or adding functionality.