has_short_name

has_short_name allows you to abbreviate user's names, hopefully in a culturally sensitive way.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'has_short_name', github: 'mieko/has_short_name'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install has_short_name

Usage

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_short_name
end

m1 = User.create(name: 'Mike Owens')

# m1 is unique on first name
m1.short_name # => "Mike"

m2 = User.create(name: 'Mike Tyson')

# Notices that "Mike" is no longer unique
m2.short_name # => "Mike T."

# To ease confusion, we'll adjust all "Mikes" to the same level
User.adjust_short_names!
m1.short_name # => "Mike O."
m2.short_name # => "Mike T."

# Let's make it annoying
m3 = User.create(name: 'Mike Mikerson')
User.adjust_short_names!

User.all.pluck(:short_name) => # ['Mike O.', 'Mike T.', 'Mike M.']

Alternate columns

You can specify the columns used as a source and destination of a short name with :from and and :column:

class Usuario < BaseTable
  # Use the 'nombre' column to generate 'short_nombre'
  has_short_name from:   :nombre,
                 column: :short_nombre
end

has_short_name can be used on more than one set of [:from, :column] tuples, if you find a reason to do so.

`:only`

Sometimes you don't want a short name generated, for example, when you have a "name" field that can contain a human's name, or a company name. To prevent "Internet Widgets Pty." from being shortened to "Internet" or "Internet P.", you'll want something like:

class User
  has_short_name only: -> { human? }

  # Alternatively:
  # has_short_name only: :human?
  # Which is converted to the same
end

In this case, short_name_candidates will only return a single name, and after negotiating short names, it'll always win out, implying short_name = name. If the user already has a short name assigned, that will be the only candidate returned, so the following is pretty useful:

class User
  has_short_name only: :should_assign_short_name?

private
  def should_assign_short_name
    # short_name_explicitly_assigned could be a column on the
    # user table, and set to true if a user explicitly chooses
    # their short name
    human && !short_name_explicitly_assigned
  end
end

Rules

has_short_name comes with a list of default rules, which are executed in order. (See HasShortName::DefaultRuleSet). These currently are anglo-centric, but I'd like to expand them. If you need a particular set of rules, has_short_name accepts a :rules configuration option, which overrides the defaults.

Contributing

I'd really like contributions to this gem, as I only have a vague set of rules that hold for common, Anglo-centric names. A good set of defaults that hold more globally would be nice. If this gem fucks up your name, or should bail instead of abbreviating it, a patch, or even a descriptions of what the proper behaviour is appreciated.

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request