I am pretty sure this has been brought up elsewhere, and have heard it discussed a few places myself.
I want to know what thoughts surround the concept of having ActiveRecord have methods such as class Model < ActiveRecord::Base column :first_name, :string => 255 column :description, :text column :created_on, :datetime column :random_number, :integer column :cost, :float end Basically as you can see, the active record will have a new method called column, which defines the data model within. Now, ActiveRecord could also be kept the same, where-by if a column is not defined, it simply introspects the database and uses that, but if a column is defined, it ensures that the column has been created and matches the data type set. If the column has not been created, when that model is loaded, the table is appended to and the column added. If that column name already exists, such as "first_name", but is let's say, only a varchar(40) instead of a varchar(255) as defined in the model above, then the column method will log an error, or could be defined to cause an application segfault and halt the system until that has been corrected. I have heard that this may be part of Nitro, but from my perspective, may be worth having in Rails/ActiveRecord as well. This seems like a pretty sweet place to be able to create your app. Basically, you could write nothing but Ruby/Rails, and your application would be generated from the ground up. All it would need is a valid DB connection. Migrations would work, and even the models themselves would work without migrations. Some may argue that this should be done in Migrations, and may well be the case. But is worth discussing alternatives, and finding out if this is worth investigating (and yes David, as a plugin!). -Nb ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Nathaniel S. H. Brown http://nshb.net ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ _______________________________________________ Rails-core mailing list [email protected] http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails-core
