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