Thank you both for this conversation. I thought of bringing up in this thread a few points related to conversations such as: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/13971
Is there any plan to make enum so that it can be used 'to expose user-facing attributes' ? It would be really awesome to use this kind of optimizations not just for managing the internal states of the application. Thank you for the awesome work Stefano On Friday, October 24, 2014 at 12:40:31 AM UTC+2, Nicholas Firth-McCoy wrote: > > I definitely agree that there are some 'gotchas' here. > > I can't think of any disadvantages to switching to using `Integer()` > instead of `to_i` - as you say, this would only raise an exception in > instances where the user has a bug in their code, which is a good thing to > discover. I don't think we could change this elsewhere though. > > I also think having a new scope for the enum generated such as ` > Conversation.with_status(string_or_num_status)` would be a nice helper in > cases where you have a dynamic value as it lets you avoid the alternative > `Conversation.send(@some_conversation.status)` or > `Conversation.where(status: > Conversation.statuses(@some_conversation.status))`. > > On Thursday, October 23, 2014 7:02:27 AM UTC+11, Justin Gordon wrote: >> >> I wrote up this detailed description of the issues I'm having with Rails >> Enums: >> >> Enums and Queries in Rails 4.1, and Understanding Ruby >> <http://www.railsonmaui.com/blog/2014/10/22/enums-and-queries-in-rails-4-dot-1/> >> >> At the bottom of the article, I post my recommendation: >> >> >> Recommendations to the Rails Core Team >> >> In response to this issue, I submitted this github issue: Rails where >> query should see value is an enum and convert a string #17226 >> <https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/17226> >> >> 1. @Bounga and @rafaelfranca on Github suggest that we can’t >> automatically convert enum string values in queries. I think that is true >> for converting cases of a ? or a named param, but I suspect that a >> quick map lookup to see that the attribute is an enum, and a string is >> passed, and then converting the string value to an integer is the right >> thing to do for 2 reasons: >> 1. This is the sort of “magic” that I expect from Rails. >> 2. Existing methods find_or_initialize_by and find_or_create_by will >> result in obscure bugs when string params are passed for enums. >> >> However, it’s worth considering if all default accessor methods >> (setters) should be consistently be called for purposes of passing values >> in a map to such methods. I would venture that Rails enums are some Rails >> provided magic, and thus they should have a special case. If this >> shouldn’t >> go into Rails, then possibly a gem extension could provide a method like >> Model.where_with_enum which would convert a String into the proper >> numerical value for the enum. I’m not a huge fan of the generated Model >> scopes for enums, as *I like to see what database field is being >> queried against.* >> 2. Aside from putting automatic conversion of the enum hash >> attributes, I recommend we change the automatic conversion of Strings to >> integers to use the stricter Integer(some_string) rather than >> some_string.to_i. The difference is considerable, String#to_i is >> extremely permissive. Try it in a console. With the to_i method, any >> number characters at the beginning of the String are converted to an >> Integer. If the first character is not a number, *0 is returned*, >> which is almost certainly a default enum value. Thus, this simple change >> would make it *extremely* clear when an enum string is improperly >> used. I would guess that this would make some existing code crash, but in >> all circumstances for a valid reason. As to whether this change should be >> done for all integer attributes is a different discussion, as that could >> have backwards compatibility ramifications. This change would require >> changing the tests in ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::TypesTest >> >> <https://github.com/rails/rails/blob/master/activerecord/test/cases/types_test.rb>. >> >> For example, this test: >> >> 1 >> >> assert_equal 0, type.type_cast_from_user('bad') >> >> would change to throw an exception, unless the cases are restricted >> to using Integer.new() for enums. It is inconsistent that some type >> conversions throw exceptions, such as converting a symbol to an integer. >> Whether or not they should is much larger issue. In the case of enums, *I >> definitely believe that proper enum string value should not silently >> convert to zero every time.* >> >> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Core" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rubyonrails-core+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-core@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-core. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
