Rails: How to use i18n with Rails 4 enums

Starting from Rails 5, all models will inherit from ApplicationRecord.

class User < ApplicationRecord
  enum status: [:active, :pending, :archived]
end

I use this superclass to implement a generic solution for translating enums:

class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.abstract_class = true

  def self.human_enum_name(enum_name, enum_value)
    I18n.t("activerecord.attributes.#{model_name.i18n_key}.#{enum_name.to_s.pluralize}.#{enum_value}")
  end
end

Then I add the translations in my .yml file:

en:
  activerecord:
    attributes:
      user:
        statuses:
          active: "Active"
          pending: "Pending"
          archived: "Archived"

Finally, to get the translation I use:

User.human_enum_name(:status, :pending)
=> "Pending"

I didn't find any specific pattern either, so I simply added:

en:
  user_status:
    active:   Active
    pending:  Pending...
    archived: Archived

to an arbitrary .yml file. Then in my views:

I18n.t :"user_status.#{user.status}"

Here is a view:

select_tag :gender, options_for_select(Profile.gender_attributes_for_select)

Here is a model (you can move this code into a helper or a decorator actually)

class Profile < ActiveRecord::Base
  enum gender: {male: 1, female: 2, trans: 3}

  # @return [Array<Array>]
  def self.gender_attributes_for_select
    genders.map do |gender, _|
      [I18n.t("activerecord.attributes.#{model_name.i18n_key}.genders.#{gender}"), gender]
    end
  end
end

And here is locale file:

en:
  activerecord:
    attributes:
      profile:
        genders:
          male: Male
          female: Female
          trans: Trans

To keep the internationalization similar as any other attribute I followed the nested attribute way as you can see here.

If you have a class User:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  enum role: [ :teacher, :coordinator ]
end

And a yml like this:

pt-BR:
  activerecord:
    attributes:
      user/role: # You need to nest the values under model_name/attribute_name
        coordinator: Coordenador
        teacher: Professor

You can use:

User.human_attribute_name("role.#{@user.role}")