AutoStripAttributes

AutoStripAttributes helps to remove unnecessary whitespaces from ActiveRecord or ActiveModel attributes. It's good for removing accidental spaces from user inputs (e.g. when user copy/pastes some value to a form and the value has extra spaces at the end).

It works by adding a before_validation hook to the record. No other methods are added. Gem is kept as simple as possible.

Gem has option to set empty strings to nil or to remove extra spaces inside the string.

Howto / examples

Include gem in your Gemfile:

gem "auto_strip_attributes", "~> 1.0"

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  # Normal usage where " aaa   bbb\t " changes to "aaa bbb"
  auto_strip_attributes :nick, :comment

  # Squeezes spaces inside the string: "James   Bond  " => "James Bond"
  auto_strip_attributes :name, :squish => true

  # Won't set to null even if string is blank. "   " => ""
  auto_strip_attributes :email, :nullify => false
end

Filters

Default filters

By default the following filters are defined (listed in the order of processing):

  • :strip (enabled by default) - removes whitespaces from the beginning and the end of string
  • :nullify (enabled by default) - replaces empty strings with nil
  • :squish (disabled by default) - replaces extra whitespaces (including tabs) with one space

Custom Filters

New version of this gem supports custom filtering methods. Custom methods can be set by calling to set_filter method inside a block passed to AutoStripAttributes::Config.setup. set_filter method accepts either Symbol or Hash as a parameter. If parameter is a Hash, the key should be filter name and the value is boolean whether filter is enabled by default or not. Block should return processed value.

This is an example on how to add html tags stripping in Rails


E.g. inside config/initializers/auto_strip_attributes.rb

AutoStripAttributes::Config.setup do
  set_filter :strip_html => false do |value|
    ActionController::Base.helpers.strip_tags value
  end
end


And in the model:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  auto_strip_attributes :extra_info, :strip_html => true
end

Change the order of filters is done by manipulating filters_order array. You may also enable or disable filter by default by changing filters_enabled hash.

Example of making :strip_html filter first and enabling :squish by default

AutoStripAttributes::Config.setup do
  filters_order.delete(:strip_html)
  filters_order.insert(0, :strip_html)
  filters_enabled[:squish] = true
end

AutoStripAttributes::Config.setup accepts following options

  • :clear => true, to clear all filters
  • :defaults => true, to set three default filters mentioned above

Versions

  • 1.x : Had only basic filters
  • 2.x : Includes config for extra filters (thnks to @dadittoz)

Requirements

Gem has been tested with ruby 1.8.7, 1.9.2 and Rails 3.x. Although it should also work with previous versions of rails.

http://travis-ci.org/#!/holli/auto_strip_attributes

Support

Submit suggestions or feature requests as a GitHub Issue or Pull Request. Remember to update tests. Tests are quite extensive.

Other approaches

This gem works by adding before_validation hook and setting attributes with self[attribute]=stripped_value. See: https://github.com/holli/auto_strip_attributes/blob/master/lib/auto_strip_attributes.rb

Other approaches could include calling attribute= from before_validation. This would end up calling possible custom setters twice. Might not be desired effect (e.g. if setter does some logging).

Method chaining attribute= can be also used. But then stripping would be omitted if there is some code that calls model[attribute]= directly. This could happen easily when using hashes in some places.

Similar gems

There are many similar gems. Most of those don't have :squish or :nullify options. Those gems might have some extra methods whereas this gem is kept as simple as possible. These gems have a bit different approaches. See discussion in previous chapter.

Licence

Released under the MIT license (http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php)