I use this Ephemeral pattern frequently across projects to have a simple pattern for tracking the lifecycle of a record, whether it is currently active/ended/draft, and soft-deleting records to keep an audit trail.
For an ActiveRecord model that has started_at and ended_at columns (datetime), include Ephemeral to give it ephemeral behavior.
include Timelines::EphemeralThis gives you the following Instance methods:
# Returns an AuditTrail object containing the resource and any associated events, in chronological order
.audit_trail
# Returns an AuditTrail object containing the resource and any associated events, in reverse order
.audit_trail(reverse: true)
# Returns a boolean indicating whether the record is currently active
.active?
# Returns a boolean indicating whether the record was active at a given date
.active_at?(date)
# Sets the record's `started_at` to the current time to indicate that it has started
.start!
# Returns a boolean indicating whether the record has started
.started?
# Sets the record's `ended_at` to the current time to indicate that it has ended
.end!
# Returns a boolean indicating whether the record has ended
.ended?
# Returns a boolean indicating whether the record is currently in a draft state (nil `started_at` and `ended_at`, or `started_at` in the future)
.draft?
# Soft-deletes the record by setting `ended_at` to the current time, removing it from the `.active` scope.
.destroyAnd the following Class methods:
# Soft-deletes all records by setting `ended_at` to the current time, removing them from the `.active` scope.
.self.destroy_allEnables defining conditions for automated logging of events for a record's many lifecycle events, which are logged through an ActiveJob adapter.
The parameters are an optional on: param (which defaults to before_save), and 4 procs that define the resource, actor, event, and conditions for logging the event. Conditions can be used to ensure an event only fires on a new record, or on a record that has been updated in a specific way/meets certain criteria to be eligible to log the event.
include Timelines::TracksEvents
tracks_timelines_event :create_event,
resource: ->(instance) { instance },
on: :before_create,
actor: ->(instance) { instance.created_by },
event: ->(instance) { "instance::create" },
conditions: ->(instance) { instance.new_record? }Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem "timelines"Run this command to create a timelines_events table in your project:
bin/rails generate timelines:installThen you can call [whatever method] to get events attached to the record.
Pull requests/issues are welcome on GitHub
The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.