Rails 4.1 Enums: enum.status = nil

Question

I tried the new enum Feature of rails 4.1 and have some troubles with it.

My model looks like this:

class Report < ActiveRecord::Base
  after_save :notify_clients
  before_update :update_progress
  before_create do
    self.status ||= 'started'
  end

  enum status: %w{started active fail success}

  #...
end

And if I try to use it in my view like this:

.item{class: @report.status, data: {id: @report.id}}

I'll see this in my browser

<div class="item" data-id="25">

I tried to find out what status actually is using rails console:

  [11] pry(main)> Report.all.sample.status
    Report Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `reports`.* FROM `reports`
  => nil
  [12] pry(main)> Report.all.sample.status
    Report Load (0.2ms)  SELECT `reports`.* FROM `reports`
  => nil
  [13] pry(main)> Report.all.sample.status
    Report Load (0.3ms)  SELECT `reports`.* FROM `reports`
  => nil
  [14] pry(main)> Report.all.sample.status
    Report Load (0.2ms)  SELECT `reports`.* FROM `reports`
  => nil

And now look at this:

 [22] pry(main)> Report.all.sample.attributes['status']
    Report Load (0.2ms)  SELECT `reports`.* FROM `reports`
  => "3"

I don't get it...

Answer 1

I had the same problem. It was caused because the enum field was defined as a string in my schema instead of an integer. In your case, status is probably defined as a string in your schema.

class CreateReport < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :reports do |t|
      ...
      t.integer :status     # if this is t.string you get the symptoms described above!
      ...
    end
  end
end

Answer 2

Also you can continue to use string in your schema, but it means that you have to explicitly map relation between attribute and database value using hash. Something like this;

enum status: { started: 'START', active: 'ACT', fail: 'FAIL', success: 'SUCC'}