PaperTrail::Rails

An extension to PaperTrail that adds some useful automatic integrations with Rails:

• Automatically record which migration made the change in the version record (in the command attribute) when migrations make changes to data.
• Automatically record rails console as the command in the version record (in the command attribute).
• Automatically record the source location that initiated the change so you can figure out what caused caused the change later when inspecting a version record
• (Optional) Never forget to set the actor (whodunnit) when making changes in the rails console. It will prompt you to choose an actor user as soon as you try to make a change that would record a PaperTrail Version. (Enter system if you don't want any particular user recorded as the actor.)
• (Optional) Automatically ask for a reason whenever you make a change

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'paper_trail-rails'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Add and run this migration:

class VersionsAddSourceLocationCommandReason < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.2]
  def change
    change_table :versions do |t|
      t.text    :source_location
      t.text    :command
      t.text    :reason
    end
    change_table :versions do |t|
      t.index   :command
      t.index   :reason
    end
  end
end

Configuration

Add to config/initializers/paper_trail.rb and change as needed:

PaperTrail::Rails.configure do |config|
  config.console.ask_for_user      = true
  config.console.require_user      = false
  config.console.auto_reset_user   = false

  config.console.ask_for_reason    = true
  config.console.require_reason    = false
  config.console.auto_reset_reason = true

  config.user_filter = ->(users) { users.admins }
end

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/TylerRick/paper_trail-rails.