Rails Active Model
Rails Active Model is a foundational component of the Ruby on Rails framework that provides a standard interface for working with data in a database-agnostic way. It abstracts the interactions between application code and the database, allowing developers to create, validate, and manipulate data objects without being tied to a particular database management system.
Key Features:
Data Abstraction: Active Model abstracts database records into Ruby objects, enabling developers to work with data as if it were simple Ruby objects.
Validation: It offers a rich set of validation methods for ensuring data integrity before it is saved to the database. This includes presence validations, uniqueness validations, custom validations, and more.
Callbacks: Active Model supports callbacks that allow developers to hook into the lifecycle of a data object, such as before save, after save, and before validation, among others.
Serialization: It provides built-in serialization and deserialization capabilities, allowing data to be easily converted to different formats such as JSON, XML, or YAML.
Internationalization: Active Model supports internationalization (I18n) for creating applications with multilingual support.
Naming Conventions: It enforces Rails naming conventions for mapping between object properties and database columns, making it seamless to work with databases.
Customization: Developers can extend Active Model functionality by creating custom methods and modules tailored to their application’s specific requirements.
Active Model plays a pivotal role in the Rails framework, serving as the foundation for ActiveRecord, which is responsible for handling database interactions. It enables developers to build robust and database-agnostic applications while adhering to Rails’ conventions and best practices.