Rails connection_adapter SqlServer fix for boolean fields

I tried to use Ruby on Rails with Microsoft SQLServer recently, and I kept having problems with my "bit" fields. Looking on the web, the Rails repository claims to have fixed this, so I downloaded the new adapter from svn. It didn't work for me, so I started hacking. I really need to send this as a diff to the ActiveRecord maintainers, with test code to prove that it works. By the way, I am using ADO mode ... maybe their original code works for ODBC mode. I suspect that tests should be run for both modes. Anyway, enough chatter, here is the fix!

In file sqlserver_adapter.rb, add the #cast_to_bit and modify #quote as following:

  def cast_to_bit(value)
    case value
      when nil     then nil
      when '1'     then 1
      when '0'     then 0
      when 1       then 1
      when 0       then 0
      when 'true'  then 1
      when 'false' then 0
      else
        # puts "Invalid Boolean #{value}"
        0
    end
  end

  def quote(value, column = nil)
    case value
      when String            
        if column && column.type == :binary
           "'#{quote_string(column.string_to_binary(value))}'"
        elsif column && column.type == :boolean
           "#{column.cast_to_bit(value)}"
        else
"'#{quote_string(value)}'"
        end
      when NilClass              then "NULL"
      when TrueClass             then '1'
      when FalseClass            then '0'
      when Float, Fixnum, Bignum then value.to_s
      when Date                  then "'#{value.to_s}'"
      when Time, DateTime        then "'#{value.strftime("%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")}'"
      else                            "'#{quote_string(value.to_yaml)}'"
    end
  end

Update: Check my new blog entry for more on booleans. How does Rails scaffolding select HTML input tags?

Update2: As of Dec 8, 2005, the Rails 0.14.3 has changed the SqlServer adapter. My boolean fix may not be required (I haven't tested it yet).