Custom type-casting with ActiveRecord, Virtus and dry-types

In Drop this before validation and just use a setter method I showed you how to avoid a common pattern of using before_validation to fix the data. Instead I proposed you just overwrite the setter, call your custom logic there and use super. I also showed you what you can do if you can’t easily call super .

But sometimes to properly transform the incoming data or attributes you just need to improve the type-casting logic. And that’s it. So let’s see how you can add your custom typecasting rules to a project.

And let’s continue with the simple example of stripped string.

Active Record 4.2+

class StrippedString < ActiveRecord::Type::String
  def cast_value(value)
    value.to_s.strip
  end
end

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  attribute :title, StrippedString.new
end

p = Post.new(title: " Use Rails ")
p.title
# => "Use Rails"

Virtus

class StrippedString < Virtus::Attribute
  def coerce(value)
    value.to_s.strip
  end
end

class Address
  include Virtus.model
  include ActiveModel::Validations

  attribute :country_code, String
  attribute :street,       StrippedString
  attribute :zip_code,     StrippedString
  attribute :city,         StrippedString
  attribute :full_name,    StrippedString

  validates :country_code,
    :street,
    :zip_code,
    :city,
    :full_name,
    presence: true
end

a = Address.new(city: " Wrocław ")
a.city
# => "Wrocław"

dry-types 0.6

module Types
  include Dry::Types.module
  StrippedString = String.constructor(->(val){ String(val).strip })
end

class Post < Dry::Types::Struct
  attribute :title, Types::StrippedString
end

p = Post.new(title: " Use dry ")
p.title
# => "Use dry"

Conclusion

If you want to improve type casting for you Active Record class or if you need it for a different layer (e.g. a Form Object or Command Object) in both cases you are covered.

Historically, we have been using Virtus for that non-persistable layers. But with the recent release of dry-types (part of dry-rb) we started also investigating this angle as it looks very promising. I am very happy with the improvements added between 0.5 and 0.6 release. Definitelly a step in a right direction.

Summary

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