Versionable

Simple versioning for Rails Active Record with relationship support.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'versionable'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install versionable

Usage

Setup

Versionable needs versions table, which can be generated using these commands:

rails g versionable:install
rails db:migrate

Model configuration

To enable change tracking in your model, just call acts_as_versionable. It accepts same options as as_json method. These options will be used to produce JSON snapshot of your data and compare it with previous versions to detect changes.

class BlogPost < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_versionable only: [:title, :contents]
end

Please be aware that Versionable applies some changes on your configuration:

• :root will be always set to false,
• :created_at and :updated_at will be always excluded (that applies to included relationships as well),
• Foreign keys of relationships that are listed in include option will be excluded.

Including relationships

Versionable allows you to include related records in version snapshot. Just add your relationships to include option:

class BlogPost < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_versionable include: :comments
  has_many :comments
end

And then define parent option on the other side of the relationship:

class Comment < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_versionable parent: :blog_post
  belongs_to :blog_post
end

Now even if you call store_versions on a comment, it will create version for its blog post.

Storying versions

Now each time you'd like to store a version, all you have to do is to call store_versions on your model. It takes only one optional argument wich is version author.

class BlogPostsController < ApplicationController

  def update
    @blog_post = BlogPost.find(params[:id])
    if @blog_post.update_attributes(blog_post_params)
      @blog_post.store_versions(current_user)
      # render success
    else
      # render failure
    end
  end

end

Contributing

Contribution directions go here.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.