README

ActsAsHidden
============

A plugin to help you make an Active Record object invisible. Invisible items don't show up in find operations but can be fetched by passing a :with_hidden=>true key. They also contain a passphrase field 
that can be used to make public urls for hidden items on your website. 

Tested upto Rails 2.2.2

Requirements
============

If you want to make the model Foo invisible, you need to put the following in the class definition

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  
   .....

   acts_as_hidden

   ....

end

You also need to add the following fields to your Foos table (with a migration)

  add_column  :foo,       :visible,     :boolean, :default => true
  add_column  :foo,       :passphrase,  :string,  :limit => 40

Example
=======

Hiding and finding Objects:
---------------------------

To make an instance of Foo invisible, you need to call set_invisible on it.

  @foo = Foo.find(id)

  # Make it invisible
  @foo.set_invisible

Searching for foo with id will now return nothing

  @foo = Foo.find(id) # => nil


To find foo, you need to 

  @foo = Foo.find_any(id) # => returns foo with id back

To do regular find(:all,:condtions=>"blah") kind of searches, you need to pass :with_hidden key

  Foo.find(:all,:conditions=>'blah', :with_hidden=>true)

You can create public urls like /foo/show?p=12313jmnk90890hasdh and see if params[:p] matches with @foo.passphrase

UnHiding Objects
----------------

To make foo visible again

  @foo.set_visible

Hiding Associations after hiding parent
---------------------------------------

To do some post processing after hiding/unhiding, just implement these two callbacks. Remeber, its just optional

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base

  ...

  # Plugin calls this after hiding this instance
  def after_hiding
    # Do whatever you want, you can hide association, delete feeds, remove this item from search index .. whatever
  end

  def after_unhiding
    # Unhide children, put back in search index etc .. whatever you want
  end

  ...

end

More detailed help and test cases coming soon

Credits
=======

Thanks to Acts as Paranoid (http://ar-paranoid.rubyforge.org/) for providing inspiration for this plugin

Copyright (c) 2008 [prateek@muziboo.com], released under the MIT license