MakeTaggable

Tagging for Active Record models, across any number of named contexts.

One model can carry several independent sets of tags — genres and moods, skills and interests — each with its own list, counts and queries. Tags can belong to the user who applied them, keep the order they were added in, and be cached on the record for display.

Tested against Rails 7.2, 8.0 and 8.1 on Ruby 3.2 through 4.0.

bundle add make_taggable

rails make_taggable_engine:install:migrations
rails db:migrate

class Book < ApplicationRecord
  make_taggable            # the :tags context, for free-form tags
  make_taggable :genres    # a context of your own, for a curated set
end

Each context is a separate set of tags, with its own list:

book = Book.create!(title: "Dune", genre_list: "sci-fi, classic")

book.genre_list                  # => ["sci-fi", "classic"]

Add and remove individual tags. Nothing is written until you save:

book.genre_list.add("space opera")
book.genre_list.remove("classic")
book.save

book.genre_list                  # => ["sci-fi", "space opera"]
book.genres                      # => [#<MakeTaggable::Tag name: "sci-fi">, #<MakeTaggable::Tag name: "space opera">]

Assigning replaces the whole list, and the two contexts never touch each other:

book.tag_list = "desert, chosen-one, re-read"
book.save

book.tag_list                    # => ["desert", "chosen-one", "re-read"]
book.genre_list                  # => ["sci-fi", "space opera"]

Find them again:

Book.tagged_with("sci-fi")                             # carries this tag
Book.tagged_with(["sci-fi", "space opera"])            # carries both
Book.tagged_with(["sci-fi", "fantasy"], any: true)     # carries either
Book.tagged_with(["fantasy"], exclude: true)           # carries neither

Scope a query to one context, and tags in the others stop counting:

Book.tagged_with("sci-fi", on: :genres)                # => [#<Book title: "Dune">]
Book.tagged_with("sci-fi", on: :tags)                  # => []

Counts, for tag clouds and "most used" lists:

Book.tag_counts_on(:genres)                            # tags carrying a `count`
Book.top_genres(10)

Tags are ordinary attributes as far as your controller is concerned:

params.expect(book: [:title, :tag_list])            # Rails 8
params.require(:book).permit(:title, :tag_list)     # Rails 7.2

API documentation is generated with YARD:

bundle exec yard doc

See UPGRADING.md. Version 1.0 removes the acts_as_* method names and changes how delimiters are escaped.

Install new migrations when upgrading:

rails make_taggable_engine:install:migrations
rails db:migrate

The test suite runs against bare Active Record — there is no dummy application to generate.

bundle install
bundle exec rake

That uses in-memory SQLite. To run against another adapter, point it at a database:

DATABASE_ADAPTER=postgresql DATABASE_URL=postgres://localhost/make_taggable_test bundle exec rake
DATABASE_ADAPTER=mysql2 DATABASE_URL=mysql2://root@127.0.0.1/make_taggable_test bundle exec rake

Across every supported Rails version:

bundle exec appraisal install
bundle exec appraisal rake

Format with Standard before opening a pull request:

bundle exec standardrb --fix

Public API needs YARD documentation. bundle exec yard stats --list-undoc should report 100%.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for more.

MakeTaggable is free to use under the MIT licence, and maintained in spare time. If it saves you some, you can sponsor its development.

Sponsorship buys no support commitment and no influence over what gets built — bug reports and pull requests are as welcome from everyone as they always were.

MakeTaggable is a fork of acts-as-taggable-on by Michael Bleigh and Joost Baaij, with thanks to its contributors.

Available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.