Additional built-into-rails support for similar things may be coming

[jrochkind]

So this gem has existed since Rails 4.2. (If I remember right!).

For most of the time since then, there hasn't been that much evolution of anything related to ActiveRecord/ActiveModel::Attributes. One thing that happened was ActiveModel::Attributes was added.

But for the past year or so there's been an "epic" issue-of-issues in Rails for adding a lot of features and docs to ActiveRecord/ActiveModel::Attributes, many of which have a lot of overlap with what attr_json has been itself adding on top of AR/AM::Attributes

rails/rails#50568

It was originally tagged to Rails 7.2 Milestone. It is now tagged to Rails 8.0 milestone. But note none of the checkboxes are checked -- I'm not sure how much progress we should expect to be made when?

But I'm keeping an eye on it, because most of the stuff in there is very relevant to what we're doing here, like it is addressing the very same things this gem addresses.

So when/if it does get completed, what does it mean for this gem? I don't know, but I'm keeping an eye on it!

Some ideas:

• Perhaps there would be a new major version release of this gem that's re-implemeneted to be on top of those features built into Rails, with any missing features that were already here re-implemented on top. If necessary, if there even are any?

• Perhaps this gem goes into maintenance/deprecation, suggesting people migrate to features built into Rails?

I'm not sure, but it's good to be aware of! that ticket in Rails has also been there since January, with little progress, so any timelines are not guaranteed, it's possible whoever was interested in it originally has other priorities now?