# Tagging recommendation - acts\_as\_taggable\_on\_steroids best?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [September 9, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206 "2009-09-09T18:19:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 6:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/1 "2009-09-09T18:19:53Z")

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hey all

What’s the most popular tagging plugin/gem these days? Is it  
acts\_as\_taggable\_on\_steroids? Or is something else better?

I’d like to basically replicate flickr’s tagging as much as possible, eg  
allowing multi-word tags to be denoted by quotes or seperated by commas.

thanks  
max

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**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 9, 2009, 8:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/2 "2009-09-09T20:20:02Z")

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> What’s the most popular tagging plugin/gem these days? Is it  
> acts\_as\_taggable\_on\_steroids? Or is something else better?

Dunno. I recently (3 months ago) had to pick and went with acts-as-  
taggable-on. Seems to work just fine. Lets you have different “sets”  
of tags per model which I don’t use, but could be useful.

Setting/Accessing tags is easy… just set “tag\_list” in your form as  
a text field (assuming ‘tag’ is the name of your set).

Don’t remember why I didn’t go with steroids…

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**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 11:34am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/3 "2009-09-10T11:34:25Z")

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Hi

I agree with phillip suggstion.

@max,  
Don’t go with steroids as it has limitations for multiple taggings like  
(  
tags, skills, interests ) that were extended in acts\_as\_taggable\_on

Sandip

–  
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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/4 "2009-09-10T17:36:14Z")

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> > 
> 
> “note:name=Eb”, so i think we would stick with that system. Maybe  
> that’s how acts\_as\_taggable\_on does it under the hood? Anyway i’ll  
> look  
> it that.

It doesn’t. Here’s the migrations… It uses the ‘context’ field.

```
 create_table :tags do |t|
   t.column :name, :string
 end

 create_table :taggings do |t|
   t.column :tag_id, :integer
   t.column :taggable_id, :integer
   t.column :tagger_id, :integer
   t.column :tagger_type, :string

   # You should make sure that the column created is
   # long enough to store the required class names.
   t.column :taggable_type, :string, :limit => 32
   t.column :context, :string, :limit => 32

   t.column :created_at, :datetime
 end
```

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 5:50pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/5 "2009-09-10T17:50:27Z")

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oh, that’s cool, so it just uses an optional extra field then. That’s  
very easy to integrate with what we have already (as is a\_a\_t\_o\_s).  
cheers

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/85f322/32.png) [@cmaxvv](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/cmaxvv)\
**Post date:** [September 10, 2009, 11:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/tagging-recommendation-acts-as-taggable-on-steroids-best/175206/6 "2009-09-10T11:43:31Z")

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Sandip R. wrote:

> Hi
> 
> I agree with phillip suggstion.
> 
> @max,  
> Don’t go with steroids as it has limitations for multiple taggings like  
> (  
> tags, skills, interests ) that were extended in acts\_as\_taggable\_on
> 
> Sandip
> 
> –  
> Ruby on Rails Developer  
> [http://funonrails.wordpress.com](http://funonrails.wordpress.com)  
> [www.joshsoftware.com](http://www.joshsoftware.com)

Thanks for the suggestions guys. We already have some tagging in place,  
using machine tags to delineate different kinds of tagging, eg  
“note:name=Eb”, so i think we would stick with that system. Maybe  
that’s how acts\_as\_taggable\_on does it under the hood? Anyway i’ll look  
it that.

thanks!  
max