.touch doesn't create a version

[bokmann]

I have a particular issue I'm solving by making related elements in a object graph call '.touch' on a root node of the graph, forcing the updated_at field to change (which gives me the bounds on a date query I'm doing).

It would be really useful if .touch created a new version. As a workaround I have created a method called '.tickle' that increments an integer that I otherwise ignore, but that is slightly hackish.

Potentially related to #323

[batter]

So touch doesn't create a version because it doesn't trigger ActiveRecord::Callbacks like a normal update does, and PaperTrail generates versions for updates from a before_update callback.

I sort of think that before_update should kick off update callbacks in ActiveRecord, but it's not technically an update in the conventional sense of the word, so I can understand why it might not, but that is why versions aren't getting generated...

We may be able to override the touch method for these models so it invokes update_attributes instead of the touch method, but I'm not sure it's a good idea. It might make more sense to make a different but similar method like touch_with_version?

[batter]

Did some more research into this. Apparently there is an after_touch callback, which we may be able to leverage for this issue.. I'll keep digging and see if I can come up with a solution that makes sense.

[batter]

@bokmann - I decided to add a touch_with_version instance method to the methods that get mixed into a model's instance methods when you declare has_paper_trail on a model for the time being.

I've been thinking it may make sense to change the callback that gets fired when you update a model's attributes to use an after_update callback instead of an before_update callback like it does currently, and at that point I will probably hook into that after_touch callback. Or it may make sense to use an alias_method_chain so there is still a touch_without_version option, I haven't decided yet. But these changes probably won't happen until version 3.1.0. Thanks for the suggestion.