In Rails, how should I implement a Status field for a Tasks app - integer or enum?

Question

For a Rails 3.0 Todo app, I have a Tasks model with a Status field. What\'s the best way to store the Status field data (field type) and still display a human-r

Answer 1

Using integer to store the status is a good idea. Nonetheless, I think the code provided by the accepted answer is not elegant since it pollutes the whole model class just because of an attribute.

My suggestion is overriding the attribute getter:

def status
  {
    0 => "active",
    1 => "inactive"
  }[read_attribute(:status)] # use the read_attribute method to prevent infinite loop.
end

The logic of transforming the integer into a string will be only in this getter method, so you don't need to make the class dirty.