acts_as_filterable

acts_as_filterable is an ActiveRecord plugin that was hacked together (originally a monkey patch) to avoid repeating the same text filtering logic that was re-implemented all over the place in a legacy domain model.

Background

You might ask why we just didn’t convert the column value. That would be the right way to go but with tens of millions of rows and numerous legacy apps that expect the data to be a character string; the alternative seemed much more appealing for the time being :). So putting this in place would avoid the garbage data coming in moving forward and assure that the logic is implemented in a sane (and re-usable) way. Hopefully someone else can find a use for it as well…

Current filters in place:

filter_for_digits: leaves only numeric values
filter_for_uppercase: uppercase all alpha characters
filter_for_lowercase: lowercase all alpha characters
filter_for_whitespace: strips and non-essential whitespace out of a string (leaving only single whitespace characters).

Features I’d like to add in the future:

User-defined custom filters configured via DSL.
Additional macros that filter decimal values, etc.
Allow the developer to opt-in models for filtering and not include the plugin in ActiveRecord::Base

Runtime Dependencies

Rails 1.2+
Tested on Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7, 1.9.1

Install

Rails

config.gem "acts_as_filterable", :source => "http://gemcutter.org"

Bundler

source "http://gemcutter.org"
gem "acts_as_filterable", "0.2.0"

RubyGems

gem install acts_as_filterable --source http://gemcutter.org

Usage

class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
  filter_for_digits :phone_number, :fax_number
end

Contributing

If something is broken or you need a feature; you know the deal. Don’t be part of the problem. Patches or pull requests are welcome.