Question

I have a model which stores user settings as 0 or 1 (for true/false). In my code, I’m having to do this:

if @user.settings.show_menu == 1
  # do this
end

How can I leave out the == 1 or == 0? I’ve tried:

if @user.settings.show_menu
  # do this
end

But it’s not evaluating as true, same with when using !@user.settings.show_menu

It’s been a long day, please guide me in the right direction. Thanks!

Answer 1

In Rails there is a boolean column for use with the database that stores as a number and converts accordingly. Generally this is encoded in the database as SMALLINT. If you have a regular INT you could always migrate to convert them.

An example migration:

change_table :table_name do |t|
   t.change(:boolean_column, :boolean)
end

Within your app, the standard practice is to refer to boolean flags with their ? method version, like:

if (@user.settings.show_menu?)
  # ...
end

If this method is not defined, you’ll get an exception which can lead you to discover the problem. This compares favorably to having it always evaluate as true.