Correct Format Plugin Released

July 4th, 2009

I have released a new Plugin for Rails, called Correct-Format.

Github URL: github.com/mendable/correct-format

This plugin allows you to automatically correct simple user input mistakes
and format user-input without raising an ActiveRecord Error and without
inserting inconsistently formatted data into your database. Using this
plugin will enhance the usability and user-friendlyness of your application
and increase your data integrity.

You can automatically:

Make a field uppercase
Make a field lowercase
Capitalize the first letter of the first word (and lower case everything
else)
Capitalize the first letter of all words (and lower case everything else)
Replace comma with period and downcase email addresses

Installation

  git submodule add git://github.com/mendable/correct-format.git vendor/plugins/correct-format
  git commit -am "add correct-format plugin"

Ensure that you have this in your config/deploy.rb:

  set :git_enable_submodules, true

so that the submodules are pulled down when you deploy your application.

Example Usage

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    # Make usernames consistently lower case
    correct_format_downcase :username

    # Replace comma's with periods in email address, and make email address all lower case
    correct_format_email :email

    # Capitalize first letter of first word, and downcase the rest
    correct_format_capitalize :username

    # Capitalize all first letters of ALL WORDS in the string
    correct_format_capitalize_each :address_line_1, :address_line_2

    # UK Postcodes are upper case
    correct_format_upcase :postcode

    # apply a function to EVERY string field in a record
    correct_format_capitalize self.attributes.select{|k, v| self.column_for_attribute(k).type == :string }.map(&:first)
  end

Functions

correct_format_downcase:	Make entire field downcase
correct_format_capitalize:	Capitalize first letter of FIRST word
correct_format_capitalize_each:	Capitalize first letter of each word
correct_format_email:	Format email address field, downcase everything and convert commas to periods
correct_format_upcase:	Make entire field uppercase

Examples

correct_format_downcase:	`MR JOHN SMITH` becomes `mr john smith`
correct_format_capitalize:	`A Sentence HERE` becomes `A sentence here`
correct_format_capitalize_each:	`123 FOOBAR STREET` becomes `123 Foobar Street`
correct_format_email:	`example@HOTMAIL,com` becomes `example@hotmail.com`
correct_format_upcase:	`w1 5ql` becomes `W1 5QL`

Testing

This plugin contains a full suite of tests, you need the sqlite3 gem
available to be able to run the tests. You probably already have this, but
in case you do not, then with Debian/Ubuntu, do this to install it:

    $ sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
    $ sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Then run rake test from the vendor/plugins/correct-format
directory, or use:

    $ rake test:plugins

Feedback and patches welcome.

Categories: Rails, User Experience, activerecord, plugins

Tags: correct-format, downcase, lowercase, plugin, plugins, Rails, upcase, uppercase Leave a comment

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