How to store and compare :symbols in an ActiveRecord (Ruby on Rails)

Question

I thought it would be good to populate a status field in an activeRecord table using constants. However, when it comes to checking if this status has a particular status, I\'m h

Answer 1

This is kind of late, but may help someone else.

If you have classes with different statuses, you might consider an approach using constants along with scopes like this:

class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
  #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  # Configuration
  #-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  # STATUS is used to denote what state the account is in.
  STATUS = { :active => 1, :suspended => 2, :closed => 3 }

  # Scopes
  scope :active, where(:status => Account::STATUS[:active])
  scope :suspended, where(:status => Account::STATUS[:suspended])
  scope :closed, where(:status => Account::STATUS[:closed])
  ...
end

Then you can easily find records based on status, like so:

# get all active accounts
active_accounts = Consumer.active.all
# get 50 suspended accounts
suspended_accounts = Consumer.suspended.limit(50)
# get accounts that are closed and [some search criteria]
closed_accounts = Consumer.closed.where([some search criteria])

Hope this helps someone else!

EDIT: If you're more into using gems, the simple_enum gem looks like an excellent alternative.