The Nifty Key Value Store

If you want to create a quick key/value store in your application where the values relate to an existing model, this is very helpful.

Add the gem to the Gemfile

gem "nifty-key-value-store", require: "nifty/key_value_store"

You'll need to create the database table and then, once added, you can specify what objects you want to store.

$ rails generate nifty:key_value_store:migration
$ rake db:migrate

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  key_value_store :settings
  key_value_store :other_settings
end

person = Person.new
person.settings             = {:colour => 'red', :fruit => 'apple'}
person.other_settings_json  = "{"hello":"world"}"
person.save

person = Person.find(person.id)
person.settings         #=> {'colour' => 'red', 'fruit' => 'apple'}
person.settings_json    #=> "{'color':'red', 'fruit':'apple'}"

A few points to note about this:

• All values are stored as strings in the database
• All keys are stored as strings and returned as strings in their hash