ActsAsTaggableOn¶ ↑

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.

Installation¶ ↑

Rails 2.3.x¶ ↑

The last version of gem that is compatible with Rails 2.3.x is 2.1.0.

We are planning no longer to support Rails 2, but if you want to contribute something only for Rails 2, we left rails2 branch for that.

Plugin¶ ↑

Acts As Taggable On is available both as a gem and as a traditional plugin. For the traditional plugin you can install like so:

script/plugin install git://github.com/mbleigh/acts-as-taggable-on.git

Acts As Taggable On is also available as a gem plugin using Rails 2.1’s gem dependencies. To install the gem, add this to your config/environment.rb:

config.gem "acts-as-taggable-on", :source => "http://gemcutter.org", :version => '2.1.0'

After that, you can run “rake gems:install” to install the gem if you don’t already have it.

Post Installation¶ ↑

1. script/generate acts_as_taggable_on_migration

2. rake db:migrate

Rails 3.x¶ ↑

To use it, add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'acts-as-taggable-on', '~>2.1.0'

Post Installation¶ ↑

1. rails generate acts_as_taggable_on:migration

2. rake db:migrate

Testing¶ ↑

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

Usage¶ ↑

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

Finding Tagged Objects¶ ↑

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)

Relationships¶ ↑

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">]

Dynamic Tag Contexts¶ ↑

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]

Tag Ownership¶ ↑

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

Tag cloud calculations¶ ↑

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; }

Why TaggableModel.joins(:tags) doesn’t work (only for Rails >=3.0.10)?¶ ↑

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)

Contributors¶ ↑

• Artem Kramarenko (artemk) - Maintainer

• TomEric (i76) - Maintainer

• Michael Bleigh - Original Author

• Szymon Nowak - Rails 3.0 compatibility

• Jelle Vandebeeck - Rails 3.0 compatibility

• Brendan Lim - Related Objects

• Pradeep Elankumaran - Taggers

• Sinclair Bain - Patch King

Patch Contributors¶ ↑

• tristanzdunn - Related objects of other classes

• azabaj - Fixed migrate down

• Peter Cooper - named_scope fix

• slainer68 - STI fix

• harrylove - migration instructions and fix-ups

• lawrencepit - cached tag work

• sobrinho - fixed tag_cloud helper

Copyright © 2007-2011 Michael Bleigh (mbleigh.com/) and Intridea Inc. (intridea.com/), released under the MIT license