state_machine vs aasm gems for app ruby on rails 3.2

Question

I need a state machine for a message private system and order status system.

you can see these two gems:

https://github.com/pluginaweek/state_machine

https://github.com/rubyist/aasm

Edited..

I'm using mongoid with mongodb database

What gem is most appropriate for this features?

Tropism

Either is perfectly appropriate, they are both state machine gems that work well with activerecord, are actively maintained and used heavily. I don't think you can go wrong with either of these. I have used both but generally prefer the syntax of the pluginaweek state machine gem a bit better. – Keverne

Answer 1

Update:

Check out the recent RailsCast: A Tour of State Machines

One thing to mention is that when you use a state machine, it may make it difficult to generate objects for tests which are in an invalid state..

Previous Answer:

Both gems are working great, are compatible with Mongoid, and are actively maintained.

I've used AASM in the past, and it has been around a bit longer, but the state_machine gem has quite a bit more functionality and more options. e.g. check the methods generated by state_machine on the base class (below their example); you can define more details, e.g. transition callbacks, conditional transitions; you can do path analysis, there's even a GraphViz generator to generate a nice picture of your state graph.

If you need just a simple state machine, you can go with AASM. If you need to model more details like conditional transitions or transition callbacks, path analysis, do queries about the states a lot, or need nested state machines, then go for the state_machine gem.

References:

AASM : https://github.com/aasm/aasm

state_machine : https://github.com/pluginaweek/state_machine

Additional info about state_machine:

http://www.pluginaweek.org/2009/03/08/state_machine-one-machine-to-rule-them-all/

http://rdoc.info:8080/github/pluginaweek/state_machine/master/StateMachine/Machine

Goldia