Automatically cast params with the Rails Attributes API

#ruby #rails #webdev

A common practice in Rails apps is to extract logic into plain-old Ruby objects (POROs). But often you are passing data to these objects directly from controller params and the data comes in as strings.

class SalesReport
  attr_accessor :start_date, :end_date, :min_items

  def initialize(params = {})
    @start_date = params[:start_date]
    @end_date = params[:end_date]
    @min_items = params[:min_items]
  end

  def run!
    # Do some cool stuff
  end
end

report = SalesReport.new(start_date: "2020-01-01", end_date: "2020-03-01", min_items: "10")

# But the data is just stored as strings :(
report.start_date
# => "2020-01-01"
report.min_items
# => "10"

You probably want start_date to be a date and min_items to be an integer. You could add your own basic type casting to the constructor.

class SalesReport
  attr_accessor :start_date, :end_date, :min_items

  def initialize(params)
    @start_date = Date.parse(params[:start_date])
    @end_date = Date.parse(params[:end_date])
    @min_items = params[:min_items].to_i
  end

  def run!
    # Do some cool stuff
  end
end

But even better, you could take advantage of the Attributes API to handle this casting automatically.

Usage

As of Rails 6.1, this module is technically a private API. Use at your own risk!

The Rails Attributes API is used under-the-hood to type cast attributes for ActiveRecord models. When you query for a model that has a datetime column in the database and the Ruby object that gets pulled out has a DateTime field – that’s the Attributes API at work.

We can spruce up our report model by mixing in the ActiveModel::Model and ActiveModel::Attributes modules.

class SalesReport
  include ActiveModel::Model
  include ActiveModel::Attributes

  attribute :start_date, :date
  attribute :end_date, :date
  attribute :min_items, :integer

  def run!
    # Do some cool stuff
  end
end

report = SalesReport.new(start_date: "2020-01-01", end_date: "2020-03-01", min_items: "10")

# Now the attributes are native types!

report.start_date
# => Wed, 01 Jan 2020
report.min_items
# => 10

This pattern is great for reducing boilerplate code in form objects, report objects, or any other Model-ish Ruby class in your Rails apps. Let the framework do the type casting for you, instead of trying to reimplement it yourself!

Options

The Attribute API will automatically handle type casting for most primitives. All of the basics are covered.

attribute :start_date, :date
attribute :max_size, :integer
attribute :enabled, :boolean
attribute :score, :float

You can find the full list of out-of-the-box types here: activemodel/lib/active_model/type.

The coolest part is that the types are very robust in what kind of input they accept. For example, the boolean Attribute type works with any of these values for false:

FALSE_VALUES = [
  false, 0,
  "0", :"0",
  "f", :f,
  "F", :F,
  "false", :false,
  "FALSE", :FALSE,
  "off", :off,
  "OFF", :OFF,
]

You can also register your own custom types that implement cast and serialize:

ActiveRecord::Type.register(:zip_code, ZipCodeType)

class ZipCodeType < ActiveRecord::Type::Value
  def cast(value)
    ZipCode.new(value) # cast to your own ZipCode class for special handling
  end

  def serialize(value)
    value.to_s
  end
end

Additionally, you can set a default value for with the Attributes API:

attribute :start_date, :date, default: 30.days.ago
attribute :max_size, :integer, default: 15
attribute :enabled, :boolean, default: true
attribute :score, :float, default: 9.75