state_machines VS Statesman

State Machines (Ruby) - A popular library providing a Ruby DSL for easily building finite state machines

As a regular user of the state_machine Ruby gem, I wouldn't recommend it. If you don't believe me, just check out the "Class definition" section of the usage examples: https://github.com/state-machines/state_machines#usage

The problems are obvious. It's built on magic and indirection. This leads to difficult to debug state machine problems. For anything beyond simple state machines you quickly lose any idea of what your object is doing.

Might this be better handled with a state machine with active record integration?

Here's an example of how it can happen - look at the code examples in https://github.com/state-machines/state_machines - almost everything you are coding is in the DSL of that library if you are using it:

I’d strongly recommend Statesman instead: https://gocardless.com/blog/statesman/

I’m unaffiliated, just have used a lot of Ruby SM libraries.

Honestly state machines are fantastic in Rails too. My last company built [Statesman](https://github.com/gocardless/statesman/) and being able to lean on it to prevent you getting into invalid states is fantastic. You also get the bonus of tracking the history of states your resources went through (which is especially useful when you're dealing with payments).

At some point you'll have to think about query performance on the state transition table, but it'll go further than you think and is firmly in the realm of problems of success.

I know you were doing educational proof of concent. But when I write them, I usually reach for the statesman gem. Makes state machines pretty trivial IME.