Properties for Rails

Ruby gem to handle properties for ActiveRecord instances by storing them as serialized Hash in a separate database table. Namespaces and defaults included.

Requirements

Ruby 1.9.3 or newer
Rails 3.1 or newer (including Rails 5.2)

Installation

Include the gem in your Gemfile and run bundle to install it:

gem 'rails-properties'

Generate and run the migration:

rails g rails_properties:migration
rake db:migrate

Usage

Define properties

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_properties do |s|
    s.key :dashboard, :defaults => { :theme => 'blue', :view => 'monthly', :filter => false }
    s.key :calendar,  :defaults => { :scope => 'company'}
  end
end

If no defaults are needed, a simplified syntax can be used:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_properties :dashboard, :calendar
end

Every property is handled by the class RailsProperties::PropertyObject. You can use your own class, e.g. for validations:

class Project < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_properties :info, :class_name => 'ProjectPropertyObject'
end

class ProjectPropertyObject < RailsProperties::PropertyObject
  validate do
    unless self.owner_name.present? && self.owner_name.is_a?(String)
      errors.add(:base, "Owner name is missing")
    end
  end
end

Set properties

user = User.find(1)
user.properties(:dashboard).theme = 'black'
user.properties(:calendar).scope = 'all'
user.properties(:calendar).display = 'daily'
user.save! # saves new or changed properties, too

user = User.find(1)
user.properties(:dashboard).update_attributes! :theme => 'black'
user.properties(:calendar).update_attributes! :scope => 'all', :display => 'daily'

Get properties

user = User.find(1)
user.properties(:dashboard).theme
# => 'black

user.properties(:dashboard).view
# => 'monthly'  (it's the default)

user.properties(:calendar).scope
# => 'all'

Delete properties

user = User.find(1)
user.properties(:dashboard).update_attributes! :theme => nil

user.properties(:dashboard).view = nil
user.properties(:dashboard).save!

Using scopes

User.with_properties
# => all users having any property

User.without_properties
# => all users without having any property

User.with_properties_for(:calendar)
# => all users having a property for 'calender'

User.without_properties_for(:calendar)
# => all users without having properties for 'calendar'

Eager Loading

User.includes(:property_objects)
# => Eager load property_objects when querying many users

License

MIT License

This gem is a rename of rails-settings by Georg Ledermann

rails-properties

Development

Runtime