acts_as_filterable

acts_as_filterable is an Rails gem for ActiveRecord to avoid repeating the same text filtering logic that was re-implemented all over the place in a legacy domain model.

Background

You might ask why we just didn't convert the column value. That would be the right way to go but with tens of millions of rows and numerous legacy apps that expect the data to be a character string; the alternative seemed much more appealing for the time being :). So putting this in place would avoid the garbage data coming in moving forward and assure that the logic is implemented in a sane (and re-usable) way.

Current default filters

• digits: leaves only numeric values
• uppercase: uppercase all alpha characters
• lowercase: lowercase all alpha characters
• whitespace: strips and non-essential whitespace out of a string (leaving only single whitespace characters).

Custom filters.

To create custom filters, create a Rails initializer like config/initializers/acts_as_filtered.rb with a configuration block like so. The return value will be used for the new filtered value. Previous version of acts_as_filtered only allowed string mutation, so this is a big win.

ActsAsFilterable.configure do |config|

  config.add_filter :default_price do |value|
    value || 0.0
  end

  config.add_filter :integer_cast do |value|
    value.try(:to_i)
  end

end

Versions

• 0.6.1 - Do not set #attributes unless attr/key was set.
• 0.6.0 - Support Rails 4.0 to 4.2.
• 0.5.1 - Better Railtie init process and 3.0/3.1 method generation.
  • Default string filters will cast to a string if needed.
  • Added filter stack test for reads and writes. Only 3.2 compatabile and 1.9 compatabile
• 0.5.0 - Added custom filters and complete overhaul of code.
  • WARNING! Interface change, switch from filter_for_digits :attrib to acts_as_filterable :digits, :attrib.
  • Now uses a Railtie for load hooks. Only patch ActiveRecord when present.
  • Added a dummy Rails application to test against.
  • There is now only one acts_as_filterable class method added to ActiveRecord::Base! This also keeps non participating models from getting callbacks that they are not concerned with.
  • Filters are applied to values coming right out of the database too!
• 0.4.0 - Project refactor and modernization of gem setup.

Testing

The acts_as_filterable gem is fully tested from Rails 3.2 to 4.2. We run our tests in both Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. If you detect a problem, open up a github issue or fork the repo and help out. After you fork or clone the repository, the following commands will get you up and running on the test suite.

$ bundle install
$ bundle exec appraisal update
$ bundle exec appraisal rake test

We use the appraisal gem from Thoughtbot to help us generate the individual gemfiles for each Rails version and to run the tests locally against each generated Gemfile. The rake appraisal test command actually runs our test suite against all Rails versions in our Appraisal file. If you want to run the tests for a specific Rails version, use rake -T for a list. For example, the following command will run the tests for Rails 4.2 only.

$ bundle exec appraisal rails42 rake test

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Rob Ares. See LICENSE for details. Copyright (c) 2016 CustomInk.com