Rails - Mar 2006 - rails-y way to handle quasi-numeric type

I have a class called Duration that represents a unit of time. It has lots
of time-related methods and an attribute that represents the duration in
seconds.

I want to store it in my db.  I had a column type of NUMERIC, so if i save
it, rails trys to coerce it to a float automagically and fails.

I need to display it and store it as a number but treat it in the middle
layer as a Duration so I can use all it''s wonderful functionality.
What''s
the right way to do this?

thanks.
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Hello Larry,

2006/3/18, Larry White <ljw1001@gmail.com>:
> I need to display it and store it as a number but treat it in the middle
> layer as a Duration so I can use all it''s wonderful functionality.
What''s
> the right way to do this?
You want to use composed_of

class UserOfDuration < ActiveRecord::Base
  composed_of :project_length, :class_name => ''Duration'',
:mappings =>
%w(duration_in_seconds duration)
end

http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Aggregations/ClassMethods.html#M000692

Hope that helps !
--
Fran?ois Beausoleil
http://blog.teksol.info/