Question

I want to know how to integrate document versioning in a ruby on rails web app?

Let’s say, I create a post and save it in my database. Now there is another user and changes this post. And now I will provide the user the differences between those posts. Like in Github when a new commit was pushed to the repository.

Maybe it is possible to use git for this purpose? Or what is a good approach to save different versions of one post without saving the entire post x times.

Thanks.

Answer 1

Sounds like you’re looking for an “auditing library” which has the feature:

Only save the change and info about the change

such a gem is paper_trail.

You can take a look at this rails cast for setup:

http://railscasts.com/episodes/255-undo-with-paper-trail

You can try the code:

class Posts< ActiveRecord::Base

has_paper_trail

end

And then use:

post.versions 

to access the change list.