Rails, string or integer values in status-column in db

Question

I'm having an event-model that has a status attribute, and wonder if I should make it into a string or integer field. The event can have three different statuses, "gathering", "active" or "closed". If I should go with the integer solution, should I define a constant somewhere making it possible to just use CLOSED insted of "2" (and where should I put this constant??)

Thanks in advance!

crazymykl · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-09 03:22:12Z

5

I would recommend using an integer for two main reasons.

Most databases can query and index integer columns faster than strings.
It takes up less space on disk, and over the network when querying large data sets.

Weather you choose strings or integers, you should define them as constants and reference them only through their constants. You should never use the values directly.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_string_(programming)

edited Aug 9, 2012 at 3:22

crazymykl

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answered Mar 20, 2011 at 0:32

Paul Alexander

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2 Comments

jonepatr Over a year ago

Where should I define them to make them available everywhere (controllers, views, observers an so on..)?

Paul Alexander Over a year ago

I'd imagine that this state is stored in the model, define it there. ie. Event::CLOSED.

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