rails/rails — pull request #15284 by sgrif (2014-05-23 18:57:59+00:00)
Title: Add a public API to allow users to specify column types

As a result of all of the refactoring that's been done, it's now
possible for us to define a public API to allow users to specify
behavior. This is an initial implementation so that I can work off of it
in smaller pieces for additional features/refactorings.

The current behavior will continue to stay the same, though I'd like to
refactor towards the automatic schema detection being built off of this
API, and add the ability to opt out of automatic schema detection.

Use cases:

- We can deprecate a lot of the edge cases around types, now that there
is an alternate path for users who wish to maintain the same behavior.
- I intend to refactor serialized columns to be built on top of this
API.
- Gem and library maintainers are able to interact with `ActiveRecord`
at a slightly lower level in a more stable way.
- Interesting ability to reverse the work flow of adding to the schema.
Model can become the single source of truth for the structure. We can
compare that to what the database says the schema is, diff them, and
generate a migration.