GuideRail

GuideRail is a opinionated powerful factory library for Ruby that transforms various data sources into safe, immutable Data objects. By leveraging the robust validation capabilities of dry-schema, it provides a clear and declarative way to define, validate, and instantiate your data structures.

It acts as a "guide rail," ensuring that data flowing into your application (e.g., from controller params or API responses) is valid and conforms to a defined structure before being used in your domain logic or views.

Key Features

• Powerful Validation: Built on top of dry-schema for comprehensive data validation and coercion. The generated Data object can be guaranteed to have the expected attribute. ( If you specify required )
• Immutable Data Objects: Generates instances of Ruby's native Data class, preventing accidental state mutations.
• Flexible Input: Accepts various data sources, including Hashes, Structs, and ActiveModel-like objects.
• Simple and Extendable Factory Class: A concise and intuitive DSL for defining data factories.
• View-Friendly Rendering: An optional renderable mode provides nil-safe default values, perfect for views.
• Functional-Programming-Friendly: An optional monadic mode provides integration with functional programming paradigms by returning Dry::Monads::Result objects.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'guide-rail'

And then execute:

$ bundle install

or

$ bundle add guide-rail

Usage

Most Simple

require "guide-rail"

SimpleNonNullableSchema = Dry::Schema.Params do
  required(:name).filled(:string)
end

class SimpleNonNullableCreator
  extend GuideRail

  schema SimpleNonNullableSchema
  class_name :SimpleNonNullable
end

SimpleNonNullableCreator.from(name: nil) # => #<Dry::Schema::Result{name: nil} errors={name: ["must be filled"]} path=[]>
SimpleNonNullableCreator.from(name: "John") # => #<data SimpleNonNullable name="John">
SimpleNonNullableCreator.from({}) # => #<Dry::Schema::Result{} errors={name: ["is missing"]} path=[]>

Nullable Object with renderable option

SimpleNullableSchema = Dry::Schema.Params do
  required(:name).maybe(:string)
end

class SimpleRenderableCreator
  extend GuideRail

  schema SimpleNullableSchema
  class_name :SimpleRenderable
  renderable true
end

SimpleRenderableCreator.from(name: nil) # => #<data SimpleRenderable name="">
SimpleRenderableCreator.from(name: "John") # => #<data SimpleRenderable name="John">
SimpleRenderableCreator.from({}) # => #<Dry::Schema::Result{} errors={name: ["is missing"]} path=[]>

extendable Data class

You can give a block to Creator class, the generated Data class can be extended by the block ( applying to define class method ).

This can be used to define decorator methods and conversion processes, so the generated Data class can also be used as a so-called ViewModel.

OptionalSchema = Dry::Schema.Params do
  optional(:name).filled(:string)
end

class OptionalAndYieldAccepter
  extend GuideRail

  class_name :ExtendedData
  schema OptionalSchema
  renderable true

  yield_block do
    alias_method :name_orig, :name
    define_method :name do
      "decorated #{name_orig}"
    end
  end
end

OptionalAndYieldAccepter.from({}).name.start_with? "decorated" # => true

Monadic mode

SimpleNonNullableSchema = Dry::Schema.Params do
  required(:name).filled(:string)
end

class SimpleNonNullableMonadicCreator
  extend GuideRail

  schema SimpleNonNullableSchema
  class_name :SimpleNonNullableMonadic
  monadic true
end

SimpleNonNullableMonadicCreator.from({}).either(
  ->(e) { e.value! },
  ->(e) { e.errors.to_h }
)
# => {name: ["is missing"]}

Not Implemented

• i18n support
• Railtie support
• Transparent conversion of errors

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and the created tag, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/wtnabe/guide-rail.