Im trying to standardize data stored in my database. In the sense that I want everything stored as strings. Whats the best way to convert all datatypes into strings in rails?
So if I have something like this in my database:
t.funny = no #(boolean)
if Im converting hundreds of these to strings in a loop, whats the best way to do this?
Thanks
monkey patches accepted? :)
here is one:
class Object
def to_sb
return 'no' if [FalseClass, NilClass].include?(self.class)
return 'yes' if self.class == TrueClass
self
end
end
v = true
v.to_sb
=> "yes"
v = nil
v.to_sb
=> "no"
v = false
v.to_sb
=> "no"
v = 'blah'
v.to_sb
=> "blah"
now in your model you can use t.funny.to_sb
meant to string boolean
please note that non boolean values will be returned as is
You could monkey-patch ActiveRecord or your database's connection adapter (e.g., pg gem for PostgreSQL) and have it store boolean values as strings (e.g., Y or N).
On the other hand, if you're storing everything as strings that tells me you don't care about having a typed schema. If so, perhaps you might want to take a look at alternatives such as NoSQL (MongoDB and CouchDB in particular have strong Rails integration) where everything is just a 'document' of essentially keys => values.
false and nil are both treated as same so code can be written as
class Object
def to_bool
return 'no' unless self
return 'yes' if self.class == TrueClass
self
end
end
Results:
v = true
v.to_sb
=> "yes"
v = nil
v.to_sb
=> "no"
v = false
v.to_sb
=> "no"
v = 'blah'
v.to_sb
=> "blah"
#to_s. If you want to convert all columns, I would write a migration and change the column type.change_column :users, :field, :string, limit: 100.