HasCrudFor

Follow Law of Demeter in ActiveRecord models.

HasCrudFor is a small meta-programming snippet that adds find_*, build_*, create_*, update_* and destroy_* methods intended as a better API for your associations.

Example

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :posts

  extend HasCrudFor
  has_crud_for :posts
  has_crud_for :comments, :through => :posts
end

class Post
  has_many :comments
end

blog.create_post(post_attributes)
blog.build_post(post_attributes)
blog.create_comment(post_id, comment_attributes)
blog.create_comment!(post_id, comment_attributes)  # will raise exception upon failed validation

Benefits

• easily delegate methods to other objects:

  class User
    belongs_to :blog
    delegate :create_post, :to => :blog
  end
  

• replace methods with own implementation

  class Blog
    has_crud_for :posts
  
    def create_post(attributes)
      posts.create(attributes).tap { |post| post.publish! }
    end
  end
  

  You can do whatever you need when creating new post, without hunting for blog.posts.create through your codebase! And without resorting to ActiveRecord callbacks.

• less coupling - objects don’t have to know about internal structure of other objects

• easier to mock in tests

Options

• :only, :except - specify which methods should be generated; please note that :create generates two methods: create_* and create_*!

  has_crud_for :posts, :only => [:find, :create]
  has_crud_for :posts, :except => [:destroy]
  

• :as - use different prefix in method names

  has_crud_for :posts, :as => :entries # generates methods create_entry, build_entry, etc.
  

• :through - create methods for nested associations

  has_crud_for :comments, :through => :posts
  has_crud_for :comments, :through => :posts, :as => :posts_comments
  

FAQ

• Do I need to use ActiveRecord? Or Rails?

  No. But HasCrudFor depends on inflections from ActiveSupport. And that pulls i18n gem as well.

License

This project rocks and uses MIT-LICENSE.