Select enum from form to set role

Question

Ruby on Rails 4.1

I am using Devise with enum role. It currently sets a defualt role when the User is created. I want to add a field to the form that creates Users to se

Answer 1

As enum is a wrapper for integer in Rails, and I wanted to store strings in DB instead, I did the following:

    class Child < ApplicationRecord
       enum year: {
          Infant: 'Infant',
          '2-5_years': '2_to_5_years',
          '5-8_years': '5_to_8_years',
          '8-10_years': '8_to_10 years',
          'More_than_10_years': 'More_than_10_years'
       }
       AGE_YEARS = Child.years.map { |k, v| [k.humanize, v] }
     }

In my form,

<%= f.select :age, options_for_select(Child::AGE_YEARS, params[:age]), include_blank: 'Select an age-group.' %>

As I was using PostGREsql server wherein a pre-defined datatype can be declared, I appended a column called 'year' to the Child model of type'year'.

 rails generate migration AddYearToChildren year:year

and changed the migration file as below.

class AddYearToChildren < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]
  def up
    execute <<-SQL
      CREATE TYPE year AS ENUM ('Infant', '2_5_years', '5_8_years', '8_10_years', 'More_than_10_years');
    SQL
    add_column :children, :year, :year, index: true
  end

  def down
    remove_column :children, :year

    execute <<-SQL
      DROP TYPE year;
    SQL
  end
end

Finally, rails db:migrate for DB migration changes.

So, now rails enum can be used to store strings in DB.