This rails plugin creates a set of typed accessors for data types. This is very handy when you are interacting with a service that returns strings and you want them automatically turned into more useful types.

Ex:

class Foo
  float_accessor :float
  date_accessor :date
end

>> f = Foo.new
=> #<Foo:0xb7a3dd44>
>> f.float = "1.4"
=> "1.4"
>> f.float
=> 1.4
>> f.float = "1"
=> "1"
>> f.float
=> 1.0
>> f.date = "2009-10-30"
=> "2009-10-30"
>> f.date
=> #<Date: 4910269/2,0,2299161>
>> f.date.to_s
=> "2009-10-30"

This work was done by Patt Ladd. Sean Dague has helped in packaging it.