Limit user input for legacy coding schemes

Rails
#1

The legacy db I am currently working with has lots of codes (2 character
strings) that are required to be the same in the new version of the app.
Things like country codes, language codes and others which are not
standard. Rather than create a table for each and then have a
relationship between my models, I would much prefer to have a string
field in the model being tagged with a code, limit user input via a
select box and validate against the codes. Is there a pre-existing
facility in rails for this? If not, where would be the best place to
store these arrays of codes. I imagine writing some sort of plugin, say
acts_as_limited_options, which when applied to a column and specified
with the array to validate against, adds a custom validation against the
array and adds a method to get the array of options for use in a select
box. Does this make sense?

Thanks.

#2

Brad C. wrote:

The legacy db I am currently working with has lots of codes (2 character
strings) that are required to be the same in the new version of the app.
Things like country codes, language codes and others which are not
standard. Rather than create a table for each and then have a
relationship between my models, I would much prefer to have a string
field in the model being tagged with a code, limit user input via a
select box and validate against the codes. Is there a pre-existing
facility in rails for this? If not, where would be the best place to
store these arrays of codes. I imagine writing some sort of plugin, say
acts_as_limited_options, which when applied to a column and specified
with the array to validate against, adds a custom validation against the
array and adds a method to get the array of options for use in a select
box. Does this make sense?

Thanks.

AWDWR has an example of limiting user selections on a screen in the
PAYMENT_TYPES hash. It may be in different places depending on the
edition, but in the second edition the example is in Chapter 10, “Task
E: Checkout!”.

I agree that a table for these values is overkill, unless they are
constantly being updated. A hash should do the job well.

I hope you can adapt this example to your needs.

Sean