ActsAsTaggableOn

This plugin was originally based on Acts as Taggable on Steroids by Jonathan Viney. It has evolved substantially since that point, but all credit goes to him for the initial tagging functionality that so many people have used.

For instance, in a social network, a user might have tags that are called skills, interests, sports, and more. There is no real way to differentiate between tags and so an implementation of this type is not possible with acts as taggable on steroids.

Enter Acts as Taggable On. Rather than tying functionality to a specific keyword (namely tags), acts as taggable on allows you to specify an arbitrary number of tag “contexts” that can be used locally or in combination in the same way steroids was used.

Compatibility

Versions 2.x are compatible with Ruby 1.8.7+ and Rails 3.

Versions 2.4.1 and up are compatible with Rails 4 too (thanks to arabonradar and cwoodcox).

Versions >= 3.x are compatible with Ruby 1.9.3+ and Rails 3 and 4.

For an up-to-date roadmap, see https://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on/issues/milestones

Installation

To use it, add it to your Gemfile:

ruby gem 'acts-as-taggable-on'

and bundle:

shell bundle

Post Installation

Install migrations

shell # For the latest versions : rake acts_as_taggable_on_engine:install:migrations # For versions 2.4.1 and earlier : rails generate acts_as_taggable_on:migration

Review the generated migrations then migrate : shell rake db:migrate

Upgrading

see UPGRADING

Usage

Setup

```ruby class User < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_taggable # Alias for acts_as_taggable_on :tags acts_as_taggable_on :skills, :interests end

@user = User.new(:name => “Bobby”) ```

Add and remove a single tag

ruby @user.tag_list.add("awesome") # add a single tag. alias for << @user.tag_list.remove("awesome") # remove a single tag

Add and remove multiple tags in an array

ruby @user.tag_list.add("awesome", "slick") @user.tag_list.remove("awesome", "slick")

You can also add and remove tags in format of String. This would be convenient in some cases such as handling tag input param in a String.

Pay attention you need to add parse: true as option in this case.

You may also want to take a look at delimiter in the string. The default is comma , so you don’t need to do anything here. However, if you made a change on delimiter setting, make sure the string will match. See configuration for more about delimiter.

ruby @user.tag_list.add("awesome, slick", parse: true) @user.tag_list.remove("awesome, slick", parse: true)

You can also add and remove tags by direct assignment. Note this will remove existing tags so use it with attention.

ruby @user.tag_list = "awesome, slick, hefty" @user.save @user.reload @user.tags => [#<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 1, name: "awesome", taggings_count: 1>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 2, name: "slick", taggings_count: 1>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 3, name: "hefty", taggings_count: 1>]

With the defined context in model, you have multiple new methods at disposal to manage and view the tags in the context. For example, with :skill context these methods are added to the model: skill_list(and skill_list.add, skill_list.remove skill_list=), skills(plural), skill_counts.

```ruby @user.skill_list = “joking, clowning, boxing” @user.save @user.reload @user.skills => [#<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 1, name: “joking”, taggings_count: 1>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 2, name: “clowning”, taggings_count: 1>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 3, name: “boxing”, taggings_count: 1>]

@user.skill_list.add(“coding”)

@user.skill_list # => [“joking”, “clowning”, “boxing”, “coding”]

@another_user = User.new(:name => “Alice”) @another_user.skill_list.add(“clowning”) @another_user.save

User.skill_counts => [#<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 1, name: “joking”, taggings_count: 1>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 2, name: “clowning”, taggings_count: 2>, #<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 3, name: “boxing”, taggings_count: 1>] ```

To preserve the order in which tags are created use acts_as_ordered_taggable:

```ruby class User < ActiveRecord::Base # Alias for acts_as_ordered_taggable_on :tags acts_as_ordered_taggable acts_as_ordered_taggable_on :skills, :interests end

@user = User.new(:name => “Bobby”) @user.tag_list = “east, south” @user.save

@user.tag_list = “north, east, south, west” @user.save

@user.reload @user.tag_list # => [“north”, “east”, “south”, “west”] ```

Finding Tagged Objects

Acts As Taggable On uses scopes to create an association for tags. This way you can mix and match to filter down your results.

```ruby class User < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_taggable_on :tags, :skills scope :by_join_date, order(“created_at DESC”) end

User.tagged_with(“awesome”).by_join_date User.tagged_with(“awesome”).by_join_date.paginate(:page => params[:page], :per_page => 20)

Find users that matches all given tags:

User.tagged_with([“awesome”, “cool”], :match_all => true)

Find users with any of the specified tags:

User.tagged_with([“awesome”, “cool”], :any => true)

Find users that has not been tagged with awesome or cool:

User.tagged_with([“awesome”, “cool”], :exclude => true)

Find users with any of the tags based on context:

User.tagged_with([‘awesome’, ‘cool’], :on => :tags, :any => true).tagged_with([‘smart’, ‘shy’], :on => :skills, :any => true) ```

You can also use :wild => true option along with :any or :exclude option. It will be looking for %awesome% and %cool% in SQL.

Tip: User.tagged_with([]) or User.tagged_with('') will return [], an empty set of records.

Relationships

You can find objects of the same type based on similar tags on certain contexts. Also, objects will be returned in descending order based on the total number of matched tags.

```ruby @bobby = User.find_by_name(“Bobby”) @bobby.skill_list # => [“jogging”, “diving”]

@frankie = User.find_by_name(“Frankie”) @frankie.skill_list # => [“hacking”]

@tom = User.find_by_name(“Tom”) @tom.skill_list # => [“hacking”, “jogging”, “diving”]

@tom.find_related_skills # => [, ] @bobby.find_related_skills # => [] @frankie.find_related_skills # => [] ```

Dynamic Tag Contexts

In addition to the generated tag contexts in the definition, it is also possible to allow for dynamic tag contexts (this could be user generated tag contexts!)

ruby @user = User.new(:name => "Bobby") @user.set_tag_list_on(:customs, "same, as, tag, list") @user.tag_list_on(:customs) # => ["same", "as", "tag", "list"] @user.save @user.tags_on(:customs) # => [<Tag name='same'>,...] @user.tag_counts_on(:customs) User.tagged_with("same", :on => :customs) # => [@user]

Tag Ownership

Tags can have owners:

```ruby class User < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_tagger end

class Photo < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_taggable_on :locations end

@some_user.tag(@some_photo, :with => “paris, normandy”, :on => :locations) @some_user.owned_taggings @some_user.owned_tags Photo.tagged_with(“paris”, :on => :locations, :owned_by => @some_user) @some_photo.locations_from(@some_user) # => [“paris”, “normandy”] @some_photo.owner_tags_on(@some_user, :locations) # => [#<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 1, name: “paris”>…] @some_photo.owner_tags_on(nil, :locations) # => Ownerships equivalent to saying @some_photo.locations @some_user.tag(@some_photo, :with => “paris, normandy”, :on => :locations, :skip_save => true) #won’t save @some_photo object ```

Dirty objects

```ruby @bobby = User.find_by_name(“Bobby”) @bobby.skill_list # => [“jogging”, “diving”]

@bobby.skill_list_changed? #=> false @bobby.changes #=> {}

@bobby.skill_list = “swimming” @bobby.changes.should == diving”, [“swimming”]] @bobby.skill_list_changed? #=> true

@bobby.skill_list_change.should == [“jogging, diving”, [“swimming”]] ```

To construct tag clouds, the frequency of each tag needs to be calculated. Because we specified acts_as_taggable_on on the User class, we can get a calculation of all the tag counts by using User.tag_counts_on(:customs). But what if we wanted a tag count for a single user’s posts? To achieve this we call tag_counts on the association:

ruby User.find(:first).posts.tag_counts_on(:tags)

A helper is included to assist with generating tag clouds.

Here is an example that generates a tag cloud.

Helper:

ruby module PostsHelper include ActsAsTaggableOn::TagsHelper end

Controller:

ruby class PostController < ApplicationController def tag_cloud @tags = Post.tag_counts_on(:tags) end end

View:

erb <% tag_cloud(@tags, %w(css1 css2 css3 css4)) do |tag, css_class| %> <%= link_to tag.name, { :action => :tag, :id => tag.name }, :class => css_class %> <% end %>

CSS:

css .css1 { font-size: 1.0em; } .css2 { font-size: 1.2em; } .css3 { font-size: 1.4em; } .css4 { font-size: 1.6em; }

Configuration

If you would like to remove unused tag objects after removing taggings, add:

ruby ActsAsTaggableOn.remove_unused_tags = true

If you want force tags to be saved downcased:

ruby ActsAsTaggableOn.force_lowercase = true

If you want tags to be saved parametrized (you can redefine to_param as well):

ruby ActsAsTaggableOn.force_parameterize = true

If you would like tags to be case-sensitive and not use LIKE queries for creation:

ruby ActsAsTaggableOn.strict_case_match = true

If you want to change the default delimiter (it defaults to ‘,’). You can also pass in an array of delimiters such as ([’,’, ‘

’]):

ruby ActsAsTaggableOn.delimiter = ','

NOTE: SQLite by default can’t upcase or downcase multibyte characters, resulting in unwanted behavior. Load the SQLite ICU extension for proper handle of such characters. See docs

Contributors

We have a long list of valued contributors. Check them all

Maintainer

Joost Baaij

TODO

Write benchmark script
Resolve concurrency issues

Testing

Acts As Taggable On uses RSpec for its test coverage. Inside the gem directory, you can run the specs with:

shell bundle rake spec

You can run all the tests across all the Rails versions by running rake appraise. If you’d also like to run the tests across all rubies and databases as configured for Travis CI, install and run wwtd.

License

See LICENSE