Storing Arbitrary Contact Information in Ruby on Rails
- by Anthony Chivetta
Hi,
I am currently working on a Ruby on Rails app which will function in some ways like a site-specific social networking site. As part of this, each user on the site will have a profile where they can fill in their contact information (phone numbers, addresses, email addresses, employer, etc.).
A simple solution to modeling this would be to have a database column per piece of information I allow users to enter. However, this seems arbitrary and limited. Further, to support allowing users to enter as many phone numbers as they would like requires the addition of another database table and joins.
It seems to me that a better solution would be to serialize all the contact information entered by a user into a single field in their row. Since I will never be conditioning a SQL query on this information, such a solution wouldn't be any less efficient.
Ideally, I would like to use a vCard as my serialization format. vCards are the standard solution to storing contact information across the web, and reusing tested solutions is a Good Thing. Alternative serialization formats would include simply marshaling a ruby hash, or YAML. Regardless of serialization format, supporting the reading and updating of this information in a rails-like way seems to be a major implementation challenge.
So, here's the question: Has anyone seen this approach used in a rails application? Are there any rails plugins or gems that make such a system easy to implement?
Ideally what I would like is an acts_as_vcard to add to my model object that would handle editing the vcard for me and saving it back to the database.
