Give you objects a single status that they can exist with and history of states that they have encountered.

Most recent timestamp on field is considered to be current_status

A object has a not_status if it is unset or if it is not the youngest status field.

This version is meant for rails 4.x, 3.x version is availible for historical builds.

ActiveRecord::Migration.create_table :things do |t|
  t.datetime :on_hold_at
  t.datetime :archived_at
  t.datetime :featured_at
end

class Thing < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ActsAsStatusFor

  acts_as_status_for :on_hold, :archived, :featured
  scope :both_not_on_hold_and_not_archived, -> { not_on_hold.not_archived }
end

---

Given this code you will be granted the following abilities:

status
 => returns a string '' with marks according to what status is set

status=('')
 => enforces the status set to match the status string passed in
 => ex.1 : obj.status('archived on_hold')
 => ex.2 : obj.status('not_archived not_on_hold')
 => ex.2 : obj.status('archived on_hold'); obj.status('not_archived'); # still on_hold

archived?, on_hold?, featured?
 => check on status of flag 

archived!, on_hold!, featured!
 => turn on status & save

not_archived!, not_on_hold!, not_featured!
 => turn off status & save

scopes :

not_archived, not_on_hold, not_featured,
archived    , on_hold    ' featured

status_including_ : a meta programming construct that allows you to join status flags with 'and' to build
                   a run-time query operator. ( status_including_archived_and_on_hold )

–

please note : you can protect your code from failing to exectue when your migrations
have not run yet (like on staging) but the code referencies fields about to be added
via a migration - by the use of a block

In the above example the block contains a reference to 'not_on_hold' - this is a scope
which is created by the argument to acts_as_status. :on_hold must exist in the database
for this block to run - and actually - if anyone of the status marks _at database attribute
doens't exist - the code will not install itself properly