使用备用属性值修改或创建 paper_trail 版本

Question

I have a model with a start_date and end_date.

When a version is created, if the old end_date is after the new start_date then the end_date in the paper_trail version should be set to start_date of the updated record

In sudo code this might look like...

(doesn't work and I'd prefer to not modify the version after creating it)

record.save
version = paper_trail.previous_version
if (version.end_date > record.start_date)
  version.end_date = record.start_date
  version.save
end

The sequence would look like this...

Create record

record: start_date=2021, end_date=nil

Update record

record: start_date=2022, end_date=2023
version1: start_date=2021, end_date=2022

Update record

record: start_date=2024, end_date=2037
version2: start_date=2022, end_date=2024
version1: start_date=2021, end_date=2022

rails 6.1, paper_trail 12

Answer 1

I would suggest keeping the Papertrail behavior as-is, meaning it would keep track of value changes for each field without any additional custom logic that would overwrite the values, thus breaking interface for rolling back to a version etc.

Instead, I would use meta to store and retrieve any custom data you need for the model https://github.com/paper-trail-gem/paper_trail#4c-storing-metadata