Flex Fields

Flex Fields allows you to define an arbitrary amount of data to be stored in a serialized column. Why? Because sometimes you have data that just doesn't need to be in its own column.

Installation

You should have a column in your database in order to store the serialized data. Make the column name "flex" for it to work out of the box.

class AddFlexFieldsColumn < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :some_table, :flex, :text
end
end

Examples

To activate, just need to declare flex_fields in your model.

	class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
flex_fields :foo=>String, :bar=>Integer
end

This gives you two new flex fields: foo and bar

	my_model = MyModel.new(:foo=>'foo',:bar=>1)
my_model.foo
=> 'foo'
my_model.bar
=> 1

Flex Fields works nicely with inheritance and STI, too, so don't worry about that!

	class AnotherModel < MyModel
flex_fields :more_stuff=>Array
end
another_model = AnotherModel.new
another_model.foo
=> nil
another_model.more_stuff
=> []

By default, the data is stored in a serialized Hash in a column called 'flex' You can change this by passing in column_name.

	class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
flex_fields :column_name=>:data, :foo=>String, :bar=>Integer
end

Now, everything is stored in a serialized hash in the data column.

Just like in ActiveRecord, if you want to override the default getter and setter methods, you can. Instead of using write_attribute and read_attribute, use write_flex_field and read_flex_field

	class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
flex_fields :foo=>String, :bar=>Integer
def foo
logger.debug("I am accessing foo")
read_flex_field(:foo)
end
def foo=(new_val)
logger.debug("I am setting foo to a new value")
write_flex_field(:foo,new_val)
end
end

Conversions

Flex Attributes will convert the value to the class you specify in the declaration

	class MyModel < ActiveRecord::Base
flex_fields :float_value=>Float, :integer_value=>Integer
end
model = MyModel.new
model.float_value = '1'
model.float_value
=> 1.0
model.integer_value = '1'
model.integer_value
=> 1

Currently, Flex Fields supports these types of fields:

Array
Date
DateTime
Float
Hash
Integer
String
Time