I'm trying to add a column called share to one of my resources.
The idea is that users can upload documents and share them with other (specific) users, and the array contains the emails of those that the user wants to share with.
I tried adding a migration with the code
class AddShareToDocuments < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :documents, :share, :array, :default => []
end
end
But when I open up rails console in the command prompt, it says that share:nil and user.document.share.class is NilClass.
Creating a new array in the rails console sandbox by typing
newarray = []
says that newarray.class is Array.
Can anyone spot what I'm doing wrong?
Rails 4 the PostgreSQL Array data type
In terminal
rails generate migration AddTagsToProduct tags:string
class AddTagsToProduct < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :products, :tags, :string, array: true, default: []
end
end
https://coderwall.com/p/sud9ja/rails-4-the-postgresql-array-data-type
if you want support all databases you must serialize the array in a String
class Documents < ActiveRecord::Base
serialize :share
end
class AddShareToDocuments < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :documents, :share, :string, :default => []
end
end
In case of Postgresql and array datatype I found https://coderwall.com/p/sud9ja
Arrays are not normally a type to be stored in a database. As michelemina points out, you can serialize them into a string and store them, if the type of the data in the array is simple (strings, int, etc). For your case of emails, you could do this.
If, on the other hand, you want to be able to find all of the User objects that a document was shared with, there are better ways of doing this. You will want a "join table". In your case, the join-table object may be called a Share, and have the following attributes:
class Share
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :document
end
Then, in your Document class,
has_many :shares
has_many :users, :through => :shares
As far as generating the migration, this may be hacky, but you could create a new migration that changes the type to "string" (Edit: correct code):
class AddShareToDocuments < ActiveRecord::Migration
def up
change_column :documents, :share, :string
end
def down
change_column :documents, :share, :array, :default => []
end
end