# TinySweeper

TinySweeper keeps your objects tidy!

It's a handy way to clean attributes on your Rails models, though it's independent of Rails, and can be used in any Ruby project. It gives you a light-weigt way to override your methods and declare how their inputs should be cleaned.

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## How Do I Use It?

```ruby
class Sundae
  attr_accessor :ice_cream, :topping

  include TinySweeper
  sweep(:ice_cream, :topping) { |flavor| flavor.strip.downcase }
end
```

Now your Sundae toppings will be tidied up:

```ruby
dessert = Sundae.new
dessert.ice_cream = '   CHOCOlate  '
dessert.topping = ' ButTTERscotCH   '
dessert.ice_cream #=> 'chocolate'. Tidy!
dessert.topping   #=> 'butterscotch'. Tidy!
```

TinySweeper will not bother you about your nil values; they're your job to handle.

```ruby
Sundae.new.topping = nil  # No topping? TinySweeper won't sweep it.
```

If you have an object with lots of attributes that need cleaning (because, say, they were loaded from the database), you can do that, too:

```ruby
dessert.sweep_up!
# or:
Sundae.sweep_up!(dessert)
```

### Future Ideas

Just spit-balling here...

If you often sweep up fields in the same way - say, squishing and nilifying blanks - it'd be nice to bundle that up in some way, so you don't have to repeat yourself. Something like this might be nice:

```ruby
# in config/initializers/tiny_sweeper.rb, or similar:
TinySweeper.sweep_style(:squish_and_nil_blanks) { |value|
  ...
}

class Sundae
  sweep :topping, :squish_and_nil_blanks
end
```

If TinySweeper doesn't know the sweeping technique you asked for, it would send it to the value in the typical symbol-to-proc fashion:

```ruby
class Sundae
  # This:
  sweep :topping, :strip
  # ...would be the same as this:
  sweep :topping { |t| t.strip }
end
```

#### Other Ways to Sweep

Rails models are clearly the natural use-case for this. So it would make sense to have an easy way to auto-clean up models in a table. We'll see. Right now, this works (though it's slow):

```ruby
MyModel.find_each do |m|
  m.sweep_up!
  m.save
end
```

## How Does It Work?

You include the `TinySweeper` module in your class, and define some sweep-up rules on your class' attributes. It prepends an anonymous module to your class, adds to it a method with the same name that cleans its input according to the sweep-up rule, and then passes the cleaned value to `super`.

"Why not use `after_create` or `before_save` or `before_validate` callbacks?"

That's one approach, and it's used by [nilify_blanks](https://github.com/rubiety/nilify_blanks), so it's clearly workable. But it means your data isn't cleaned until the callback runs; TinySweeper cleans your data as soon as it arrives. Also, it requires rails, so you can't use it outside of rails.

## Install It

The standard:

```
$ gem install tiny_sweeper
```

or add to your Gemfile:

```
gem 'tiny_sweeper'
```

## Contributing

Help is always appreciated!

* Fork the repo.
* Make your changes in a topic branch. Don't forget your specs!
* Send a pull request.

Please don't update the .gemspec or VERSION; we'll coordinate that when we release an update.