usage

Install with:

$ sudo gem install property

You then need to create a migration to add a ‘text’ field named ‘properties’ to
your model. Something like this:

class AddPropertyToContact < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def self.up
    add_column :contacts, :properties, :text
  end

  def self.down
    remove_column :contacts, :properties
  end
end

Once your database is ready, you need to declare the property columns:

class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Property
  property do |p|
    p.string  'first_name', 'name', 'phone'
    p.datetime 'contacted_at', :default => Proc.new {Time.now}
    p.string   'encoding',     :default => :get_encoding
  end
end

You can now read property values with:

@contact.prop['first_name']
@contact.first_name

And set them with:

@contact.update_attributes('first_name' => 'Mahatma')
@contact.prop['name'] = 'Gandhi'
@contact.name = 'Gandhi'

If you want to read as fast as possible, prop['attribute'] is your friend.