Acts_as_taggable - adding users and normalizing tags

Hey all,

I’m wondering how people are using acts_as_taggable. Two things I’d
like to do that aren’t supported out of the box are tag normalization
and user attribution. I can’t imagine I’m the first to think about
doing this.

From a schema perspective these things both seem simple, just put the
normalized tag in the tags table, and have a join table that contains
a user id and the denormalized version (i.e. tags → “swat”,
tags_to_XXX → “S.W.A.T”).

But, when I get to the coding part it gets a bit ugly. Optimally I’d
like to:

@thing.tag(user_input, :normalize => true, :user => @user)

where this causes the join table (tags_XXXX) to have its user_id fk
set, and populate a ‘denormalized’ field with “S.W.A.T” so that I can
display whatever the user typed on his/her pages.

Anybody got some code they want to share, or should I just start
hacking on taggable?

Thanks,

pt.

Parker T.
http://www.parkert.com/
510.541.0125