These are the things I think we need to define for ourselves on top of ActiveRecord

conventions.md

Things that exist

Model.column_names

[
  "id",
  "other_id",
  "other_type",
  "stuff",
  "things",
  "comments_count",
  "created_at",
  "updated_at"
]

Model.columns

[
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="id">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="other_id">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="other_type">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="stuff">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="things">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="comments_count">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="created_at">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="updated_at">
]

Model.content_columns

[
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="stuff">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="things">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="comments_count">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="created_at">,
  #<ActiveRecord::...::Column @name="updated_at">
]

model_instance.attributes

{
  "id" => 1,
  "other_id" => 2,
  "other_type" => Other,
  "stuff" => "A"
  "things" => "B"
  "comments_count" => 3
  "created_at" => 2015-09-23 09:52:40 -0700
  "updated_at" => 2015-09-23 09:52:40 -0700
}

Things I want

Use case: cleaning up places where I need to name the set of values slice("all", "the", "things") everywhere. When adding columns (middle_name etc.) this gets messy.

Model.data_column_names or Model::DATA_COLUMN_NAMES

[
  "stuff",
  "things"
]

This could be defined as a static whitelist on each model, or by blacklisting keys, timestamps, counter caches, etc. Essentially the result should be the assignable value columns that hold data input, not managed by ActiveRecord.

model_instance.data_attributes

{
  "stuff" => "A"
  "things" => "B"
}

Generated methods

• data_changes
• data_changed
• data_changed?
• etc.?

Naming

I can't decide on core_ or data_ as the prefix. Got any better ones?

• 1

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