Redaction

Easily redact your ActiveRecord Models. Great for use when you use production data in staging or dev. Simply set the redaction type of the attributes you want to redact and run via the console or the included rake task.

redaction uses Faker under the hood to generate redacted data.

Installation

NOTE: This is currently very much in beta. Use at your own risk.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "redaction"

And then execute:

$ bundle install

Usage

Redacting a Model

To "redact" a models attribute add:

class Model < ApplicationRecord
  redacts :<attribute>, with: :<redactor_type>
end

<redactor_type> can be a symbol, proc, or custom class. See Redactor Types for more information.

redacts accepts multiple attributes, provided they all use the same redactor type. i.e.:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  redacts :first_name, :last_name, with: :name
end

Redactor Types

Built in

redaction comes with a few different redactor types:

Type	Generates
:basic	A Sentence
:basic_html	An HTML snippet with strong and em tags wrapping some of the words
:email	A safe (will not send) email address
:html	Multiple HTML Paragraphs with a random amount of link tags, strong tags, and em tags
:name	A person first/last name
:phone	A phone number
:text	Multiple paragraphs

To use a built in redactor type set the with: option of a redacts call to the appropriate symbol.

Using a Proc

A Proc :with value is given two arguments: the record being redacted, and a hash with the :attribute key-value pair.

class Model < ApplicationRecord
  redacts :attribute, with: -> (record, data) { record.id }
end

would cause Model#attribute to be set to Model#id after redaction

Using a custom class

Add a folder in app/, redactors/ is suggested, and put custom redactors in there. A custom redactor should inherit from Redaction::Types::Base and should define a content method. Like so:

# app/redactors/custom_redactor.rb
class CustomRedactor < Redaction::Types::Base
  def content
    "Some Custom Value"
  end
end

and then to use it:

class Model < ApplicationRecord
  redacts :attribute, with: CustomRedactor
end

would cause Model#attribute to be set to "Some Custom Value" after redaction. Custom redactor types also get access to the record being redacted via record, and a hash with the :attribute key-value pair via data

Preforming a Redaction

There are two ways to preform the redaction.

Via Rake Task

rails redaction:redact

This will target all the models with redacted attributes. To target specific models run:

rails redaction:redact MODELS=User,Post

This will only redact the User and Post Models

Via the Rails Console

Redaction.redact!

This will target all the models with redacted attributes. To target specific models run:

Redaction.redact!(models: ["User", "Post"])

This will only redact the User and Post Models

Validations and Callbacks

By default, preforming a redaction does not trigger validations or update the updated_at attribute.

Callbacks can be skipped with the :redacting? method. i.e.:

class User < ApplicationRecord
  after_save :do_something, unless: :redacting?

  redacts :first_name, :last_name, with: :name
end

Configuration

Redaction has the following configuration options:

Option	Default	Description
email_domain	nil	Set to a string to use a custom domain for redacted emails. i.e. `Redaction.config.email_domain = "my-domain.dev"
progress_bar	true	Set to false to not use the built in progress bar when redacting
force_redaction	false	Set to true to alway fill a column with redacted content even if the attribute is nil or empty

It is reccomended that you put your configuration in an initializer like config/initializers/redaction.rb

Roadmap

• Raise Error or at least a message when skipping a passed in Model
• Configuration (touch, email domains, etc)
• Better Documentation
• More types
• Release v1.0 as a real gem

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at drbragg/redaction. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the code of conduct.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

Acknowledgments

redaction leans heavily on the awesome Faker gem. If not for their hard work this would be a much different and probably more complex project. If you like redaction please consider sending them a thank you or contributing to the gem.