StoreConfigurable

A zero-configuration recursive Hash for storing a tree of options in a serialized ActiveRecord column. Includes self aware hooks that delegate dirty/changed state to your configs owner. Read my article A Lesson In Recursion In Ruby if you are interested in how this library works.

Installation

Install the gem with bundler. We follow a semantic versioning format that tracks ActiveRecord's minor version. So this means to use the latest 3.2.x version of StoreConfigurable with any ActiveRecord 3.2 version.

gem 'store_configurable', '~> 4.0.0'

Our

4.0.x

Setup

To use StoreConfigurable, you must create a

_config

class AddStoreConfigurableField < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    add_column :users, :_config, :text
  end
  def down
    remove_column :users, :_config
  end
end

Next declare that your model uses StoreConfigurable with the

store_configurable

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  store_configurable
end

Usage

Our

config

@user.config.remember_me = true
@user.config.sortable_tables.column    = 'created_at'
@user.config.sortable_tables.direction = 'asc'
@user.config.you.should.never.need.to.do.this.but.you.could.if.you.wanted.to = 'deep_value'
@user.save

Dirty Hooks

StoreConfigurable is smart enought to let your parent object know when it changes. It is not dumb either. It will only trigger changes if the values you set are different, are new, or change the configs state. Some examples assuming the saved record's data above.

@user = User.find(42)
@user.config_changed? # => false

@user.config.remember_me = true   # Same value
@user.config_changed?             # => false
@user.config.sortable_tables.column    = 'updated_at'
@user.config.sortable_tables.direction = 'desc'
@user.config_changed? # => true

Hash Syntax

The StoreConfigurable data objects supports most

Hash

dup

@user.config.sortable_tables.delete   # Deletes this node/namespace.
@user.config.clear                    # Hash method to purge.
@user.config_changed?                 # => true

Choose Your Style

You can choose to get or set config values via any method or hash key syntax you choose. It really does not matter! This means you can mix and match dot property notation, hash string or symbol syntax and it will just work.

@user.config.color = '#c1c1c1'
@user.config['remember_me'] = true
@user.config[:sortable_tables].direction = 'asc'
@user.config.sortable_tables['column'] = 'updated_at'

@user.config['color']                       # => '#c1c1c1'
@user.config[:color]                        # => '#c1c1c1'
@user.config.remember_me                    # => true
@user.config.sortable_tables[:direction]    # => 'asc'
@user.config[:sortable_tables][:column]     # => 'updated_at'

Stored Data

StoreConfigurable persists your configuration data in YAML format to the

_config

YAML::Omap

--- !omap
- :remember_me: true
- :sortable_tables: !omap
  - :column: created_at
  - :direction: asc
- :you: !omap
  - :should: !omap
    - :never: !omap
      - :need: !omap
        - :to: !omap
          - :do: !omap
            - :this: deep_value

Todo

• Incorporate an option to compress serialized data. Gzip, MessagePack, Etc...

Other Solutions

• StoreField - Similar approach but no dirty tracking and still requires manual key configs.

Contributing

StoreConfigurable is fully tested with ActiveRecord 3.2 to 4.0 and upward. If you detect a problem, open up a github issue or fork the repo and help out. After you fork or clone the repository, the following commands will get you up and running on the test suite.

$ bundle install
$ bundle exec appraisal update
$ bundle exec appraisal rake test

We use the appraisal gem from Thoughtbot to help us generate the individual gemfiles for each ActiveSupport version and to run the tests locally against each generated Gemfile. The

rake appraisal test

Appraisal

rake -T

$ bundle exec appraisal activerecord40 rake test

License

• Released under the MIT license thanks to Decisiv, Inc.
• Copyright (c) 2014 Ken Collins