This plugin was originally based on Acts as Taggable on Steroids by Jonathan Viney. It has evolved substantially since that point, but all credit goes to him for the initial tagging functionality that so many people have used.
For instance, in a social network, a user might have tags that are called skills, interests, sports, and more. There is no real way to differentiate between tags and so an implementation of this type is not possible with acts as taggable on steroids.
Enter Acts as Taggable On. Rather than tying functionality to a specific keyword (namely “tags”), acts as taggable on allows you to specify an arbitrary number of tag “contexts” that can be used locally or in combination in the same way steroids was used.
The last version of gem that is compatible with Rails 2.3.x is 2.1.0.
To use it, add it to your Gemfile:
gem 'acts-as-taggable-on', '~>2.1.0'
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rails generate acts_as_taggable_on:migration
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rake db:migrate
Acts As Taggable On uses RSpec for its test coverage. Inside the gem directory, you can run the specs for RoR 3.x with:
rake spec
class User < ActiveRecord::Base # Alias for <tt>acts_as_taggable_on :tags</tt>: acts_as_taggable acts_as_taggable_on :skills, :interests end @user = User.new(:name => "Bobby") @user.tag_list = "awesome, slick, hefty" # this should be familiar @user.skill_list = "joking, clowning, boxing" # but you can do it for any context! @user.skill_list # => ["joking","clowning","boxing"] as TagList @user.save @user.tags # => [<Tag name:"awesome">,<Tag name:"slick">,<Tag name:"hefty">] @user.skills # => [<Tag name:"joking">,<Tag name:"clowning">,<Tag name:"boxing">] @frankie = User.create(:name => "Frankie", :skill_list => "joking, flying, eating") User.skill_counts # => [<Tag name="joking" count=2>,<Tag name="clowning" count=1>...] @frankie.skill_counts
Acts As Taggable On utilizes named_scopes to create an association for tags. This way you can mix and match to filter down your results, and it also improves compatibility with the will_paginate gem:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_taggable_on :tags, :skills named_scope :by_join_date, :order => "created_at DESC" end User.tagged_with("awesome").by_date User.tagged_with("awesome").by_date.paginate(:page => params[:page], :per_page => 20) # Find a user with matching all tags, not just one User.tagged_with(["awesome", "cool"], :match_all => :true) # Find a user with any of the tags: User.tagged_with(["awesome", "cool"], :any => true) # Find a user with any of tags based on context: User.tagged_with(['awesome, cool'], :on => :tags, :any => true).tagged_with(['smart', 'shy'], :on => :skills, :any => true)
You can find objects of the same type based on similar tags on certain contexts. Also, objects will be returned in descending order based on the total number of matched tags.
@bobby = User.find_by_name("Bobby") @bobby.skill_list # => ["jogging", "diving"] @frankie = User.find_by_name("Frankie") @frankie.skill_list # => ["hacking"] @tom = User.find_by_name("Tom") @tom.skill_list # => ["hacking", "jogging", "diving"] @tom.find_related_skills # => [<User name="Bobby">,<User name="Frankie">] @bobby.find_related_skills # => [<User name="Tom">] @frankie.find_related_skills # => [<User name="Tom">]
In addition to the generated tag contexts in the definition, it is also possible to allow for dynamic tag contexts (this could be user generated tag contexts!)
@user = User.new(:name => "Bobby") @user.set_tag_list_on(:customs, "same, as, tag, list") @user.tag_list_on(:customs) # => ["same","as","tag","list"] @user.save @user.tags_on(:customs) # => [<Tag name='same'>,...] @user.tag_counts_on(:customs) User.tagged_with("same", :on => :customs) # => [@user]
Tags can have owners:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_tagger end class Photo < ActiveRecord::Base acts_as_taggable_on :locations end @some_user.tag(@some_photo, :with => "paris, normandy", :on => :locations) @some_user.owned_taggings @some_user.owned_tags @some_photo.locations_from(@some_user) # => ["paris", "normandy"] @some_photo.owner_tags_on(@some_user, :locations) # => [#<ActsAsTaggableOn::Tag id: 1, name: "paris">...] @some_photo.owner_tags_on(nil, :locations) # => Ownerships equivalent to saying @some_photo.locations
To construct tag clouds, the frequency of each tag needs to be calculated. Because we specified acts_as_taggable_on on the User class, we can get a calculation of all the tag counts by using User.tag_counts_on(:customs). But what if we wanted a tag count for an single user’s posts? To achieve this we call tag_counts on the association:
User.find(:first).posts.tag_counts_on(:tags)
A helper is included to assist with generating tag clouds.
Here is an example that generates a tag cloud.
Helper:
module PostsHelper include ActsAsTaggableOn::TagsHelper end
Controller:
class PostController < ApplicationController def tag_cloud @tags = Post.tag_counts_on(:tags) end end
View:
<% tag_cloud(@tags, %w(css1 css2 css3 css4)) do |tag, css_class| %>
<%= link_to tag.name, { :action => :tag, :id => tag.name }, :class => css_class %>
<% end %>
CSS:
.css1 { font-size: 1.0em; }
.css2 { font-size: 1.2em; }
.css3 { font-size: 1.4em; }
.css4 { font-size: 1.6em; }
When you define acts_as_taggable_on in your model it add has_many :through associations to your model. In this has_many declaration we join ‘tags’ table using rails “:include” statement, also we use additional “:conditions” statement where we refer to joined ‘tags’ table. In rails 3.0.10 they changed logic, and now joins which is mode on model, substitutes ‘include’ from has_many declaration and place ‘joins’ at the end of sql, after ‘conditions’. So Joining is happened but after ‘Where’. While we are trying to figure out how to fix this, please use Rails 3.0.9 or don’t use Model.joins(:tags)
We have a long list of valued contributors. Check them all
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Artem Kramarenko (artemk)
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Michael Bleigh
Copyright © 2007-2011 Michael Bleigh (mbleigh.com/) and Intridea Inc. (intridea.com/), released under the MIT license