README.md

ActiveRecord::ActsAs

This is a refactor of acts_as_relation

Simulates multiple-table-inheritance (MTI) for ActiveRecord models. By default, ActiveRecord only supports single-table inheritance (STI). MTI gives you the benefits of STI but without having to place dozens of empty fields into a single table.

Take a traditional e-commerce application for example: A product has common attributes (name, price, image ...), while each type of product has its own attributes: for example a pen has color, a book has author and publisher and so on. With multiple-table-inheritance you can have a products table with common columns and a separate table for each product type, i.e. a pens table with color column.

Requirements

Requires AciveRecord 4.1.2 or newest

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'active_record-acts_as'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install active_record-acts_as

Usage

Back to example above, all you have to do is to mark Product as actable and all product type models as acts_as :product:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  actable
  belongs_to :store

  validates_presence_of :name, :price

  def info
    "#{name} $#{price}"
  end
end

class Pen < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as :product
end

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  # In case you don't wish to validate
  # this model against Product
  acts_as :product, validates_actable: false
end

class Store < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :products
end

and add foreign key and type columns to products table as in a polymorphic relation. You may prefer using a migration:

change_table :products do |t|
  t.integer :actable_id
  t.string  :actable_type
end

or use shortcut actable

change_table :products do |t|
  t.actable
end

Now Pen and Book acts as Product, i.e. they inherit Products attributes, methods and validations. Now you can do things like these:

Pen.create name: 'Penie!', price: 0.8, color: 'red'
  # => #<Pen id: 1, color: "red">
Pen.where price: 0.8
  # => [#<Pen id: 1, color: "red">]
pen = Pen.where(name: 'new pen', color: 'black').first_or_initialize
  # => #<Pen id: nil, color: "black">
pen.name
  # => "new pen"
Product.where price: 0.8
  # => [#<Product id: 1, name: "Penie!", price: 0.8, store_id: nil, actable_id: 1, actable_type: "Pen">]
pen = Pen.new
pen.valid?
  # => false
pen.errors.full_messages
  # => ["Name can't be blank", "Price can't be blank", "Color can't be blank"]
Pen.first.info
  # => "Penie! $0.8"

On the other hand you can always access a specific object from its parent by calling specific method on it:

Product.first.specific
  # => #<Pen ...>

If you have to come back to the parent object from the specific, the acting_as returns the parent element:

Pen.first.acting_as
  # => #<Product ...>

In has_many case you can use subclasses:

store = Store.create
store.products << Pen.create
store.products.first
  # => #<Product: ...>

You can give a name to all methods in :as option:

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  actable as: :producible
end

class Pen < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as :product, as: :producible
end

change_table :products do |t|
  t.actable as: :producible
end

acts_as support all has_one options, where defaults are there: as: :actable, dependent: :destroy, validate: false, autosave: true

Make sure you know what you are doing when overwriting validate or autosave options.

You can pass scope to acts_as as in has_one:

acts_as :person, -> { includes(:friends) }

actable support all belongs_to options, where defaults are these: polymorphic: true, dependent: :delete, autosave: true

Make sure you know what you are doing when overwriting polymorphic option.

Migrating from acts_as_relation

Replace acts_as_superclass in models with actable and if you where using :as_relation_superclass option on create_table remove it and use t.actable on column definitions.

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/hzamani/active_record-acts_as/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Test changes don't break anything (rspec)
4. Add specs for your new feature
5. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
6. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
7. Create a new Pull Request