Virtus Build Status

This is a partial extraction of the DataMapper Property API with various modifications. My goal is to provide a common API to define attributes on a model along with (auto-)validations so all ORMs/ODMs could use it instead of reinventing the wheel all over again. It would be also suitable for any other usecase where you need to extend your ruby objects with various attributes that require typecasting and/or validations.

Installation

gem i virtus

Basic Usage

require 'virtus'

class User
  include Virtus

  attribute :name,     String
  attribute :age,      Integer
  attribute :birthday, DateTime
end

# setting attributes in the constructor
user = User.new(:age => 28)

# attribute readers
user.name # => "Piotr"

# hash of attributes
user.attributes # => { :name => "Piotr" }

# automatic typecasting
user.age = '28'
user.age # => 28

user.birthday = 'November 18th, 1983'
user.birthday # => #<DateTime: 1983-11-18T00:00:00+00:00 (4891313/2,0/1,2299161)>

Custom Attributes

require 'virtus'
require 'json'

module MyApp
  module Attributes
    class JSON < Virtus::Attributes::Object
      primitive Hash

      def typecast(value, model = nil)
        ::JSON.parse(value)
      end
    end
  end

  class User
    include Virtus

    attribute :info, Attributes::JSON
  end
end

user = MyApp::User.new

user.info = '{"email" : "[email protected]" }'
user.info # => {"email"=>"[email protected]"}

Note on Patches/Pull Requests

  • Fork the project.
  • Make your feature addition or bug fix.
  • Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
  • Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
  • Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

Copyright (c) 2011 Piotr Solnica. See LICENSE for details.