Handling Deprecated Enum Values Safely #

If your application is evolving, you might need to deprecate old enum values while keeping the database intact.

Marking Old Enum Values as Deprecated #

Instead of removing an enum immediately, mark it deprecated and prevent new records from using it:·

class User < ApplicationRecord
  enum :status, { active: 0, inactive: 1, banned: 2, deprecated_old_status: 3 }

  validates :status, exclusion: { in: [:deprecated_old_status] }
end

Now, old records can still exist in the database, but new users cannot be assigned deprecated_old_status.