Make attributes deserialization "relaxed"

[FunkyloverOne]

Hi!

So I was playing around with this gem, and tried the following:

I have defined some JSON-backed model, let's say it was:

class Configuration
  include StoreModel::Model

  attribute :model, :string
end

Then I have created some record in my DB with filled model attribute.
Then I have renamed that model attribute to something_else.

And form this point if I load my stored record from DB, and trying to access JSON-backed model - I'm getting an error: ActiveModel::UnknownAttributeError.

So I think it's not very flexible. This makes it harder to change that JSON-schema over time.
I think that we could benefit from using same approach as mongoid uses here:
if JSON has some extra attributes - no errors raised, there's no such attribute, so just "ignore" it, but, that data is still accessible from attributes hash.

What do you think?

[DmitryTsepelev]

Hi @FunkyloverOne,

Thank you for the interest! Your idea sounds pretty reasonable, let's discuss how we can make this change. The problem is that I use #attributes from Rails and there is no way to add a custom attribute without hackery because

def attributes
  @attributes.to_hash
end

I believe the situation you describe is not a "golden path" and user knows what's going on, so it won't bother him to look up for the "lost" attribute somewhere else–what about #unknown_attributes method? Here is my proof-of-concept PR, there are no docs (yet!) but there is a spec and the code, what do you think? 🙂

[FunkyloverOne]

Hey @DmitryTsepelev,

I like it! Thanks for such a quick reply and PR! #unknown_attributes method is totally reasonable to me :)

[DmitryTsepelev]

Rolled out 0.5.0, it took a bit more time than I expected