Question

I have a User model, which has a state. The state can be either of these: [‘unverified’, ‘active’, ‘deleted’]

What is the best way to store the state of the object in the database?

Should I create three boolean fields? That would not make a lot of sense, since I might want to extend the number of states easily and only one state can be ‘true’ at the same time.

Should I use the state_machine gem just for simple switching of constant values?

Or is there any other common way, best practice, or a simple gem for this kind of job?

Answer 1

A very simple solution I’ve used for this:

In your migration

add_column :users, :state, :string

In your model

class User < ActiveRecord::Base

  STATES = %w{ unverified active deleted }

  STATES.each do |state|
    define_method("#{state}?") do
      self.state == state
    end

    define_method("#{state}!") do
      self.update_attribute(:state, state)
    end
  end
end

Then you can call

@user.active? # => returns true/false

Or

@user.active! # => sets the users state to active