bitmask-attribute

Transparent manipulation of bitmask attributes.

Example

Simply declare an existing integer column as a bitmask with its possible values.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  bitmask :roles, :as => [:writer, :publisher, :editor] 
end

You can then modify the column using the declared values without resorting to manual bitmasks.

user = User.create(:name => "Bruce", :roles => [:publisher, :editor])
user.roles
# => [:publisher, :editor]
user.roles << :writer
user.roles
# => [:publisher, :editor, :writer]

For the moment, querying for bitmasks is left as an exercise to the reader, but here's how to grab the bitmask for a specific possible value for use in your SQL query:

bitmask = User.bitmasks[:roles][:editor]
# Use `bitmask` as needed

Modifying possible values

Once you have data using a bitmask, don't change the order of the values, remove any values, or insert any new values in the array anywhere except at the end.

Contributing and reporting issues

Please feel free to fork & contribute fixes via GitHub pull requests. The official repository for this project is http://github.com/bruce/bitmask-attribute

Issues can be reported at http://github.com/bruce/bitmask-attribute/issues

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Bruce Williams. See LICENSE for details.