classy_enum

ClassyEnum adds class-based enumerator functionality to your ActiveRecord model’s attributes.

Installation

ClassyEnum has only been tested with Rails 2.3.8, but should work with any version of Rails 2.3.×. The gem is hosted at rubygems.org

It can be installed with:

  gem install classy_enum

Example Usage

The most common use for ClassyEnum is to replace database lookup tables where the content and behavior is mostly static and has multiple “types”. In this example, I have an ActiveRecord model called Alarm with an attribute called priority. Priority is stored as a string (VARCHAR) type in the database and is converted to an enum value when requested.

The fastest way to get up and running with ClassyEnum is to use the built-in Rails generator like so:

script/generate classy_enum AlarmPriority low medium high

A new file will be created at app/enums/alarm_priority.rb that will look like:

  module AlarmPriority

    OPTIONS = [:low, :medium, :high]

    module Defaults
   
    end

    include ClassyEnum
  end

  class AlarmPriorityLow

  end

  class AlarmPriorityMedium

  end

  class AlarmPriorityHigh

  end

That is the default setup, but can be changed to fit your needs, like so…

Using the OPTIONS constant, I have defined three priority levels: low, medium, and high. Each priority level can have different properties and methods associated with it. In my example, each enum value has a method called email?. By default this method returns false, but is overridden for high priority alarms and returns true.

It is important that you include ClassyEnum AFTER declaring your OPTIONS and Default methods because they are used when creating the enum classes

  module AlarmPriority

    OPTIONS = [:low, :medium, :high]

    module Defaults
      def email?
        false
      end
    end

    include ClassyEnum
  end

  class AlarmPriorityHigh
    def email?
      true
    end
  end

Then in my ActiveRecord model, Alarm, I’ve added a line that calls classy_enum_attr. The first argument is required, and is the name of the module defined above. The second argument is optional and specifies which Alarm attribute will be used as an enumerable.

In this case, I am using the module AlarmPriority, but the name of my attribute is priority. By default, it will use the name of module as the attribute name. If I wanted to do alarm.alarm_priority, I would not have included the second argument.

  class Alarm < ActiveRecord::Base
    classy_enum_attr :alarm_priority, :priority
    
    delegate :email?, :to => :priority
  end

With this setup, I can now do the following:

  @alarm = Alarm.create(:priority => :medium)
  
  @alarm.priority => AlarmPriorityMedium
  
  @alarm.email? => false
  
  @alarm.update_attribute(:priority, :high)
  
  @alarm.email? => true

Notes

An ActiveRecord validator validates_inclusion_of :field, :in => ENUM.all is automatically added to your model when you use classy_enum_attr.

Copyright

Copyright © 2010 Peter Brown. See LICENSE for details.