Hobo’s Miscellaneous Model Extensions

This chapter of the Hobo Manual describes Hobo’s model extensions, with the exception of HoboFields and Permissions, Accessible Associations and Scopes each of which have their own chapters in this manual. This chapter should describe everything else that Hobo provides to your models.

Contents

• Special Attributes
  • name
  • primary_content
  • login
  • creator
  • set_search_columns
  • never_show
• typed_id
• set_default_order
• reverse_reflection
• view_hints

doctest: prepare testapp environment doctest_require: ‘../prepare_testapp’

Special Attributes

Rails provides one “special” attribute to your model: primary_key

>> class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base; end
>> Foo.primary_key
=> "id"

primary_key references one of the columns in your table. Rails provides a default, but you can change it.

In the same fashion, Hobo provides several special attributes that generally correspond to columns in your database table.

In Hobo, these attributes are specified by passing options to their declaration:

>> class User < ActiveRecord::Base; end
>>
 class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   hobo_model

   fields do
     title :string, :name => true, :index => true
     content :text, :primary_content => true
   end
   attr_accessible :title, :content, :poster, :poster_id

   belongs_to :poster, :class_name => "User", :creator => true

   set_search_columns :title, :content
   never_show :poster

 end

>> Rails::Generators.invoke 'hobo:migration', %w(-n -m)
>> Post.connection.execute 'select * from posts'  # Post.all was breaking : /
=> []

In the above example, name, creator and primary_content specify attributes that have meaning to Hobo. set_search_columns and never_show also allow you to tag columns for Hobo.

name

Many models have a column in their table that names the object. A good example would be the title column in a blog object.

fields do
  title :string, :name => true, :index => true
end

>> Post.name_attribute
=> :title

>> Post.all
=> []

Rapid makes extensive use of this column, both directly and indirectly. The <name> tag uses it, <table-plus> uses it as the default sort column, to give two examples of direct uses.

Indirectly it is used much more often via the default to_s function that Hobo::Model provides.

>> post = Post.new(:title => "Hello")
>> post.to_s
=> "Hello"

Hobo::Model also provides a default to_param function to provide human readable URL’s:

>> post.id = 17
>> post.to_param
=> "17-hello"

You are of course welcome to provide your own to_s and to_param functions, but in most cases the Hobo::Model definitions do well.

Hobo::Model also provides a default finder, named:

>> post.save!
>> Post.named("Hello").title
=> "Hello"

If you are going to be using this finder, it is recommended that you also provide an index for your name column:

fields do
  title :string, :name => true, :index => true
end

Sometimes a single column does not do a good job of naming the object. In this case, you can provide your own name method instead:

>>
 class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
   hobo_model
   fields do
     first_name :string
     last_name :string
   end
   attr_accessible :first_name, :last_name

   def name
     first_name + ' ' + last_name
   end
 end

$ rails generate hobo:migration -n -m

>> Rails::Generators.invoke 'hobo:migration', %w(-n -m)
>> Person.connection.execute 'select * from people'
=> []

>> person = Person.new(:first_name => "John", :last_name => "Brown")
>> person.to_s
=> "John Brown"

If you use a composite name, you do lose a couple of features that require direct database access: the named finder, and the ability to use it as a sort column without loading the entire table.

If you do not provide a name for your model, Hobo will use the title attribute or function instead.

primary_content

primary_content works very similarly to name, except that it provides the “description” of the row. This is not used in very many places. Currently it is only used in the generated <card> and <show-page> for your views, but it may be used in more places in the future.

fields do
  content :text, :primary_content => true
end

If you do not explicitly set primary_content, Hobo::Model will look for a method or attribute named description, body, content, or profile and use that.

>>
 class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
   def profile
     "Boring"
   end
 end

>> Person.primary_content_attribute
=> "profile"

login

This field is only used in User models. This attribute specifies the field that uniquely identifies a user. Unsurprisingly, it’s primary use is for the login field on the signup form, but it is used elsewhere.

>>
 class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   hobo_user_model
   fields do
     email_address :string, :login => true, :unique => true
   end
   attr_accessible :email_address
 end

>> User.login_attribute
=> :email_address

creator

If you specify the creator option on one of your fields, Hobo will set it to contain the current user when creating the object.

Normally this is specified on a belongs_to:

>>
 class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :poster, :class_name => "User", :creator => true
 end

>> Post.creator_attribute
=> :poster

However, it may also be added as an option to a string field, in which case the login_attribute is saved to the field:

>>
 class Foo2 < ActiveRecord::Base
    hobo_model
    fields do
      creator_login :string, :creator => true
    end
    attr_accessible :creator_login
 end

>> Foo2.creator_attribute
=> :creator_login

Creator may also be specified via attr_accessor if you wish it to be set without being saved to the database:

>>
 class Foo3 < ActiveRecord::Base
   hobo_model
   attr_accessor :created_by, :creator => true
 end

>> Foo3.creator_attribute
=> :created_by

set_search_columns

Using the set_search_columns class function, you may specify which columns are searched by the rapid tags that provide searching capabilities.

>>
 class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   set_search_columns :title, :content
 end

>> Post.search_columns
=> ["title", "content"]

If you do not provide the search columns, Hobo defaults to %w(name title body description content profile).

never_show

never_show columns are not displayed in any views that Rapid creates.

>>
 class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   never_show :poster
 end

>> Post.never_show?(:poster)
=> true

typed_id

>> post.typed_id
=> "post:17"

typed_id is a method added to Hobo models that uniquely identifies the model in your database. This is very useful when coupled with Hobo::Model.find_by_typed_id:

>> Hobo::Model.find_by_typed_id("post:17")
=> #<Post id: 17, title: "Hello", content: nil, poster_id: nil>

This is the mechanism that is used to store the current user in the session. It is also used throughout Rapid.

set_default_order

set_default_order :name
set_default_order "name DESC"

This sets the :order option on the finder for the class.

Note that Rails 2.3 has default_scope. This may be used instead of set_default_order, although currently there are many bugs open against default_scope in Rails. See ticket #395 for more information on this issue.

reverse_reflection

This is the mechanism that Hobo uses to find a matching association on the other model.

>>
 class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
   belongs_to :poster, :class_name => "User", :creator => true
 end
>>
 class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :posts, :foreign_key => "poster_id"
 end

$ rails generate hobo:migration -n -m

>> Rails::Generators.invoke 'hobo:migration', %w(-n -m)
>> Post.all
>> User.all

>> Post.reverse_reflection(:poster).name
=> :posts

view_hints

This provides a shortcut to the corresponding ViewHints object.

>> Post.view_hints
=> PostHints