Extend your ActiveRecord models with attributes dynamically, without any schema migrations.
FriendlyORM is an implementation of a document based storage on top of MySQL.
FriendlyAttributes associates FriendlyORM documents with your ActiveRecord models, handles delegation of attribute accessors and automatically saves and destroys the associated document.
Currently, only ActiveRecord 2.3.x is supported. ActiveRecord 3 is not supported yet.
Add it to your Gemfile:
gem 'friendly-attributes'
or, to your config/environment.rb in Rails:
config.gem 'friendly-attributes'
To use Friendly Attributes, you must have an existing ActiveRecord model:
# app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# ...
end
Create a class for storing your Friendly document, extending FriendlyAttributes::Base:
# app/models/user_details.rb
class UserDetails < FriendlyAttributes::Base
end
FriendlyAttributes::Base mixes in Friendly::Document, so check out the Friendly ORM documentation for what options you can use here, like defining indexes and scopes.
Configure the attributes you need to extend your ActiveRecord model:
# app/models/account.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
include FriendlyAttributes
friendly_details UserDetails, {
String => :github_username,
Integer => [:shoe_size, :birth_year]
}
end
If using Rails, configure the database to be used by Friendly, by creating config/friendly.yml and specifying the configuration. If you don't mind mixing tables, the database can be the same as the one configured for Rails, but it does not have to be. Note that Friendly automatically creates a table for each index you define in your Friendly document.
# config/friendly.yml
development:
adapter: mysql
socket: /tmp/mysql.sock
database: friendly_database_development
username: root
password:
Use the Rails console or a rake task to create the Friendly document tables:
Friendly.create_tables!
Once complete, you can use your Friendly Attributes just like you would regular ActiveRecord attributes:
user = User.first
user.shoe_size = 42
user.save!
Check out the source documentation for more information about usage.
In order to setup a development environment and run the specs, you need Bundler:
gem install bundler
Then, install the dependencies:
bundle install
Create a database to use for runnning specs:
mysqladmin create friendly_attributes_test
Copy spec/config.yml.example and customize it with the database you have created:
cp spec/config.yml.sample spec/config.yml
Run the specs:
rake spec
Friendly Attributes was developed by Istvan Hoka and Cristi Duma.
Copyright (c) 2011 Aissac Labs. See LICENSE.txt for further details.