Agile Web Development

Overview

The ModelFormatter module allows you to easily handle fields that need to be formatted or stripped of formatting as they are set or retrieved from the database. You can designate one or more of your columns as "formatted columns" like in this example:

  class Widget < ActiveRecord::Base
    # Set an integer field as a symbol
    format_column :some_integer, :as => :integer

    # Specify the type as a class
    format_column :sales_tax, :as => Formatters::FormatCurrency
    format_column :sales_tax, :as => Formatters::FormatCurrency.new(:precision => 4)

    # Change the prefix of the generated methods and specify type as a symbol
    format_column :sales_tax, :prefix => 'fmt_', :as => :currency, :options => {:precision => 4}

    # Use specific procedures to convert the data +from+ and +to+ the target
    format_column :area, :from => Proc.new {|value, options| number_with_delimiter sprintf('%2d', value)},
                         :to => Proc.new {|str, options| str.gsub(/,/, '')}

    # Use a block to define the formatter methods
    format_column :sales_tax do
      def from(value, options = {})
        number_to_currency value
      end
      def to(str, options = {})
        str.gsub(/[\$,]/, '')
      end
    end

    ...
  end

The methods of this module are automatically included into ActiveRecord::Base as class methods, so that you can use them in your models.

Documentation

For more detailed documentation, create the rdocs with the following command:

rake rdoc

Running Unit Tests

By default, the ModelFormatter plugin uses the mysql test database, running on localhost. To run the tests, enter the following:

rake

Bugs & Feedback

Please file a bug report at http://bfolkens.lighthouseapp.com/projects/14691-model-formatter

Credits

Sebastian Kanthak’s file_column plugin - used for ideas and best practices.

Owner: Brad Folkens

Home: http://brad.folkens.com/formatting-data-in-rails-models

Repository: git://github.com/bfolkens/model-formatter.git

License: Rails' (MIT)

Category: Model