Awesome

Deep copy

Deep copy allows you to clone Active Record objects including its associations.

Installation

Just require the "deep_copy" gem on your project. On Rails 2.3, that is: config.gem "deep_copy" on your environment.rb

Usage

Pick any Active Record object and call deep_copy on it. You can also include associations and except fields, like this: new_user = user.deep_copy :include => :car, :except => [:name, {:car => [:number_of_wheels, :number_of_accidents]}] In this example we're cloning a user, including its car. However, we're not cloning the user's name nor are we cloning his car's number_of_wheels and number_of_accidents.

You can also go deeper (bad pun intended). In this example, we'll clone a lot of people (excluding their names): new_son = son.deep_copy :include => [{:parent => grand_parent}, :siblings], :except => [:name, {:parent => [:name, :grand_parent => :name]}, {:siblings => :name}]

Acknowledgements

This gem was inspired in Jan De Poorter's deep_cloning plugin. All of this work is his, except for the gem part and the field exceptions in associations.