acts_as_url¶ ↑

This acts_as extension adds the protocol (eg ‘http://’) to a url database column if missing. It also validates the url against a regular expression.

Usage/examples¶ ↑

A common usecase would be in blog comments where you want the user to be able to specify his/her website:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_url :website
end

>> comment = Comment.new
=> #<Comment:0x245fed8 ... >

The protocol is added just before the comment is saved to the database (as a before_save callback).

>> comment.website = 'example.com/path/to/file.html'
=> "example.com/path/to/file.html"

>> comment.save
=> true

>> comment.website
=> "http://example.com/path/to/file.html"

In this case protocol is already given and is therefore not added, however a trailing slash is appended.

>> comment.website = 'https://example.org'
=> "https://example.org"

>> comment.save
=> true

>> comment.website
=> "https://example.org/"

The url will be validated before it is saved to the database.

>> comment.website = 'not a url'
=> "not a url"

>> comment.invalid?
=> true

Options¶ ↑

By default allowed protocols are http and https, but you can set it specificly for an attribute as a hash value (with the attribute as the key):

acts_as_url :website, :repository => 'git'

If you want to allow several protocols, you can use an array:

acts_as_url :website => ['https', 'http']

Note that the first value in the array will always be the one prepended to the url if a protocol is omitted by the user.

>> comment.website = 'www.example.com'
=> "www.example.com"

>> comment.website
=> "https://www.example.com/"

Copyright © 2009 Molte Emil Strange Andersen, released under the MIT license