How to Properly Configure Rails 4.1 Enums in ActiveAdmin

ruby-on-rails enums activeadmin
Pop-A-Stash picture Pop-A-Stash · May 1, 2014 · Viewed 10k times · Source

I've got a Rails 4.1 app in which I use an enum to represent the privacy level of an object.

In my schema:

t.integer "privacy_level", default: 0

In my model:

enum privacy_level: { privacy_private: 0, privacy_trusted: 1, privacy_public: 2 }

In my ActiveAdmin register file:

index do
  column :privacy_level
  default_actions
end

form do |f|
  f.inputs "Edit My Model" do
    f.input :privacy_level
  end
  f.actions
end

On the ActiveAdmin index page, it works great. The privacy level of each object shows up as "privacy_private", "privacy_trusted", and "privacy_public".

However, when I try to edit an object, the input type is a number box with up and down arrows which allow me to put any integer in, regardless of whether or not the integer is a valid privacy level (even negative values).

What I would like to see is a dropdown (select) input with the three enumerated string values I defined in my model.

Answer

AlexeyMK picture AlexeyMK · May 22, 2014

Building off of Jack's answer, here's what worked for me. Say your ActiveRecord model is Tweets:

f.input :privacy_level, as: :select, collection: Tweet.privacy_levels.keys

Key things to note here:

  • your ActiveRecord has a useful dictionary (available at enum_name.pluralize) of enum keys to values.
  • using strings (and ignoring the underlying integer representation) makes it easier to write to the enum value.

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