MigrationComments¶ ↑

Comments for your migrations

Tested on:

ActiveRecord 4.x

using Ruby 1.9.3 / 2.0

ActiveRecord 3.x

using Ruby 1.8.7 / 1.9.x / 2.0

ActiveRecord 2.3.x (deprecated)

using Ruby 1.8.6 / 1.8.7

Why?¶ ↑

Migrations are wonderful. They handle all your schema changes, and in a pinch they can bring any database up to speed. However, database schemas can change rapidly while a project is maturing, and it can be difficult to know (or remember) the purpose for each table and field. As such, they deserve to be commented. These comments should be available for display wherever those fields are found.

Solution!¶ ↑

Using MigrationComments, you can simply add comments during your migrations. Or if you already have existing data structures, just add the comments afterwards in a separate migration. And of course you can always modify and delete these comments in later migrations.

So where are these comments used? Firstly, they will be included in your schema.rb dump which is where your IDE (e.g. RubyMine, TextMate) should be learning about your model structure. This means that they’ll be available at any point in your project. Additionally, if you are using the ‘annotate’ gem, these comments will be added to the annotations that are generated within your model.rb file.

Examples¶ ↑

To add a comment to an existing structure…

def self.up
  set_table_comment :table_name, "A table comment"
  set_column_comment :table_name, :column_name, "A column comment"
end

Or you can use the change_table macro…

def self.up
  change_table :table_name do |t|
    t.comment "A table comment"
    t.change_comment :column_name, "A column comment"
  end
end

Creating a new table?

def self.up
  create_table :table_name, :comment => "A table comment" do |t|
    t.string :column_name, :comment => "A column comment"
  end
end

You can also remove comments…

def self.up
  remove_table_comment :table_name
  remove_column_comment :table_name, :column_name
end

Or you can combine these commands while modifying a table…

def self.up
  change_table :existing_table do |t|
    t.comment nil                                       # remove an existing table comment
    t.string :new_column, :comment => "a new column"    # add a new column with a comment
    t.change_comment :existing_column, nil              # remove a comment on an existing column
    t.integer :another_existing_column, :comment => nil # remove a comment on an existing column while modifying the column type
    t.boolean :column_with_comment                      # modify an existing column without altering the comment
  end
end

Requirements¶ ↑

You must be using a supported DBMS (currently PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQLite).

If this isn’t an option for you, check out the ‘schema_comments’ gem at github.com/akm/schema_comments

Licensing¶ ↑

See MIT-LICENSE file for details.