Module: ActiveSupport::Inflector

Creates a class name from a plural table name like Rails does for table names to models. Note that this returns a string and not a ::Class. (To convert to an actual class follow classify with #constantize.)

classify('ham_and_eggs') # => "HamAndEgg"
classify('posts')        # => "Post"

Singular names are not handled correctly:

classify('calculus')     # => "Calculu"

Tries to find a constant with the name specified in the argument string.

constantize('Module')   # => Module
constantize('Foo::Bar') # => Foo::Bar

The name is assumed to be the one of a top-level constant, no matter whether it starts with “::” or not. No lexical context is taken into account:

C = 'outside'
module M
  C = 'inside'
  C                # => 'inside'
  constantize('C') # => 'outside', same as ::C
end

::NameError is raised when the name is not in CamelCase or the constant is unknown.

Replaces underscores with dashes in the string.

dasherize('puni_puni') # => "puni-puni"

Removes the rightmost segment from the constant expression in the string.

deconstantize('Net::HTTP')   # => "Net"
deconstantize('::Net::HTTP') # => "::Net"
deconstantize('String')      # => ""
deconstantize('::String')    # => ""
deconstantize('')            # => ""

See also #demodulize.

Removes the module part from the expression in the string.

demodulize('ActiveSupport::Inflector::Inflections') # => "Inflections"
demodulize('Inflections')                           # => "Inflections"
demodulize('::Inflections')                         # => "Inflections"
demodulize('')                                      # => ""

See also #deconstantize.

Converts the first character in the string to lowercase.

downcase_first('If they enjoyed The Matrix') # => "if they enjoyed The Matrix"
downcase_first('I')                          # => "i"
downcase_first('')                           # => ""

Creates a foreign key name from a class name. separate_class_name_and_id_with_underscore sets whether the method should put ‘_’ between the name and ‘id’.

foreign_key('Message')        # => "message_id"
foreign_key('Message', false) # => "messageid"
foreign_key('Admin::Post')    # => "post_id"

Tweaks an attribute name for display to end users.

Specifically, performs these transformations:

• Applies human inflection rules to the argument.

• Deletes leading underscores, if any.

• Removes an “_id” suffix if present.

• Replaces underscores with spaces, if any.

• Downcases all words except acronyms.

• Capitalizes the first word.

The capitalization of the first word can be turned off by setting the :capitalize option to false (default is true).

The trailing ‘_id’ can be kept and capitalized by setting the optional parameter keep_id_suffix to true (default is false).

humanize('employee_salary')                  # => "Employee salary"
humanize('author_id')                        # => "Author"
humanize('author_id', capitalize: false)     # => "author"
humanize('_id')                              # => "Id"
humanize('author_id', keep_id_suffix: true)  # => "Author id"

If “SSL” was defined to be an acronym:

humanize('ssl_error') # => "SSL error"

Yields a singleton instance of Inflector::Inflections so you can specify additional inflector rules. If passed an optional locale, rules for other languages can be specified. If not specified, defaults to :en. Only rules for English are provided.

ActiveSupport::Inflector.inflections(:en) do |inflect|
  inflect.uncountable 'rails'
end

Returns the suffix that should be added to a number to denote the position in an ordered sequence such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.

ordinal(1)     # => "st"
ordinal(2)     # => "nd"
ordinal(1002)  # => "nd"
ordinal(1003)  # => "rd"
ordinal(-11)   # => "th"
ordinal(-1021) # => "st"

Turns a number into an ordinal string used to denote the position in an ordered sequence such as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th.

ordinalize(1)     # => "1st"
ordinalize(2)     # => "2nd"
ordinalize(1002)  # => "1002nd"
ordinalize(1003)  # => "1003rd"
ordinalize(-11)   # => "-11th"
ordinalize(-1021) # => "-1021st"

Replaces special characters in a string so that it may be used as part of a ‘pretty’ URL.

parameterize("Donald E. Knuth") # => "donald-e-knuth"
parameterize("^très|Jolie-- ")  # => "tres-jolie"

To use a custom separator, override the separator argument.

parameterize("Donald E. Knuth", separator: '_') # => "donald_e_knuth"
parameterize("^très|Jolie__ ", separator: '_')  # => "tres_jolie"

To preserve the case of the characters in a string, use the preserve_case argument.

parameterize("Donald E. Knuth", preserve_case: true) # => "Donald-E-Knuth"
parameterize("^très|Jolie-- ", preserve_case: true) # => "tres-Jolie"

It preserves dashes and underscores unless they are used as separators:

parameterize("^très|Jolie__ ")                 # => "tres-jolie__"
parameterize("^très|Jolie-- ", separator: "_") # => "tres_jolie--"
parameterize("^très_Jolie-- ", separator: ".") # => "tres_jolie--"

If the optional parameter locale is specified, the word will be parameterized as a word of that language. By default, this parameter is set to nil and it will use the configured I18n.locale.

Returns the plural form of the word in the string.

If passed an optional locale parameter, the word will be pluralized using rules defined for that language. By default, this parameter is set to :en.

pluralize('post')             # => "posts"
pluralize('octopus')          # => "octopi"
pluralize('sheep')            # => "sheep"
pluralize('words')            # => "words"
pluralize('CamelOctopus')     # => "CamelOctopi"
pluralize('ley', :es)         # => "leyes"

Tries to find a constant with the name specified in the argument string.

safe_constantize('Module')   # => Module
safe_constantize('Foo::Bar') # => Foo::Bar

The name is assumed to be the one of a top-level constant, no matter whether it starts with “::” or not. No lexical context is taken into account:

C = 'outside'
module M
  C = 'inside'
  C                     # => 'inside'
  safe_constantize('C') # => 'outside', same as ::C
end

nil is returned when the name is not in CamelCase or the constant (or part of it) is unknown.

safe_constantize('blargle')                  # => nil
safe_constantize('UnknownModule')            # => nil
safe_constantize('UnknownModule::Foo::Bar')  # => nil

The reverse of #pluralize, returns the singular form of a word in a string.

If passed an optional locale parameter, the word will be singularized using rules defined for that language. By default, this parameter is set to :en.

singularize('posts')            # => "post"
singularize('octopi')           # => "octopus"
singularize('sheep')            # => "sheep"
singularize('word')             # => "word"
singularize('CamelOctopi')      # => "CamelOctopus"
singularize('leyes', :es)       # => "ley"

Creates the name of a table like Rails does for models to table names. This method uses the #pluralize method on the last word in the string.

tableize('RawScaledScorer') # => "raw_scaled_scorers"
tableize('ham_and_egg')     # => "ham_and_eggs"
tableize('fancyCategory')   # => "fancy_categories"

Capitalizes all the words and replaces some characters in the string to create a nicer looking title. titleize is meant for creating pretty output. It is not used in the Rails internals.

The trailing ‘_id’,‘Id’.. can be kept and capitalized by setting the optional parameter keep_id_suffix to true. By default, this parameter is false.

titleize('man from the boondocks')                       # => "Man From The Boondocks"
titleize('x-men: the last stand')                        # => "X Men: The Last Stand"
titleize('TheManWithoutAPast')                           # => "The Man Without A Past"
titleize('raiders_of_the_lost_ark')                      # => "Raiders Of The Lost Ark"
titleize('string_ending_with_id', keep_id_suffix: true)  # => "String Ending With Id"

Replaces non-ASCII characters with an ASCII approximation, or if none exists, a replacement character which defaults to “?”.

transliterate('Ærøskøbing')
# => "AEroskobing"

Default approximations are provided for Western/Latin characters, e.g, “ø”, “ñ”, “é”, “ß”, etc.

This method is ::I18n aware, so you can set up custom approximations for a locale. This can be useful, for example, to transliterate German’s “ü” and “ö” to “ue” and “oe”, or to add support for transliterating Russian to ASCII.

In order to make your custom transliterations available, you must set them as the i18n.transliterate.rule i18n key:

# Store the transliterations in locales/de.yml
i18n:
  transliterate:
    rule:
      ü: "ue"
      ö: "oe"

# Or set them using Ruby
I18n.backend.store_translations(:de, i18n: {
  transliterate: {
    rule: {
      'ü' => 'ue',
      'ö' => 'oe'
    }
  }
})

The value for i18n.transliterate.rule can be a simple ::Hash that maps characters to ASCII approximations as shown above, or, for more complex requirements, a Proc:

I18n.backend.store_translations(:de, i18n: {
  transliterate: {
    rule: ->(string) { MyTransliterator.transliterate(string) }
  }
})

Now you can have different transliterations for each locale:

transliterate('Jürgen', locale: :en)
# => "Jurgen"

transliterate('Jürgen', locale: :de)
# => "Juergen"

Transliteration is restricted to UTF-8, US-ASCII, and GB18030 strings. Other encodings will raise an ArgumentError.

Makes an underscored, lowercase form from the expression in the string.

Changes ‘::’ to ‘/’ to convert namespaces to paths.

underscore('ActiveModel')         # => "active_model"
underscore('ActiveModel::Errors') # => "active_model/errors"

As a rule of thumb you can think of underscore as the inverse of #camelize, though there are cases where that does not hold:

camelize(underscore('SSLError'))  # => "SslError"

Converts the first character in the string to uppercase.

upcase_first('what a Lovely Day') # => "What a Lovely Day"
upcase_first('w')                 # => "W"
upcase_first('')                  # => ""