ActiveModelAttributes

Rails 5.0 comes with a great addition of ActiveRecord Attributes API. However, that's only for ActiveRecord, you can't really use it in your ActiveModel models. Fortunately, with this gem it's possible.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'active_model_attributes'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install active_model_attributes

Usage

Define your ActiveModel model class, include ActiveModel::Model and ActiveModelAttributes modules and define attributes and their types using attribute class method:

class MyAwesomeModel
  include ActiveModel::Model
  include ActiveModelAttributes

  attribute :integer_field, :integer
  attribute :string_field, :string
  attribute :decimal_field, :decimal
  attribute :boolean_field, :boolean
end

You can also provide a default value for each attribute (either a raw value or a lambda):

class MyAwesomeModel
  include ActiveModel::Model
  include ActiveModelAttributes

  attribute :string_with_default, :string, default: "default string"
  attribute :date_field, :date, default: -> { Date.new(2016, 1, 1) }
end

You can get the list of defined attributes, their types and provided options by accessing attributes_registry class attribute, for instance:

class MyAwesomeModel
  include ActiveModel::Model
  include ActiveModelAttributes

  attribute :string_with_default, :string, default: "default string"
end

MyAwesomeModel.attributes_registry
=> { string_with_default: [:string, { default: "default string" }] }

Here's a list of supported types:

• big_integer
• binary
• boolean
• date
• datetime
• decimal
• float
• immutable_string
• integer
• string
• time

You can also add your custom types. Just create a class inheriting from ActiveModel::Type::Value or already existing type, e.g. ActiveModel::Type::Integer, define cast method and register the new type:

class SomeCustomMoneyType < ActiveModel::Type::Integer
  def cast(value)
    return super if value.kind_of?(Numeric)
    return super if !value.to_s.include?('$')

    price_in_dollars = BigDecimal.new(value.gsub(/\$/, ''))
    super(price_in_dollars * 100)
  end
end

ActiveModel::Type.register(:money, SomeCustomMoneyType)

Now you can use this type inside you ActiveModel models:

class ModelForAttributesTestWithCustomType
  include ActiveModel::Model
  include ActiveModelAttributes

  attribute :price, :money
end

data = ModelForAttributesTestWithCustomType.new
data.price = "$100.12"
data.price
=> 10012

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/Azdaroth/active_model_attributes.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.