There are many options to add publishing ability to your Rails model. The good reference is: https://naturaily.com/blog/ruby-on-rails-enum

Let's assume we have an Article model and we want to make it publishable.

Add activerecord-postgres_enum to your Gemfile

gem 'activerecord-postgres_enum'

You need this solution if you want to use schema.rb.

Let's create a Publishable module

app/models/concerns/publishable.rb

module Publishable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  STATUSES = %w[draft reviewing published unpublished].freeze
end

Create PostgreSQL enum

rails g migration add_content_status_type

class AddContentStatusType < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.0]
  def change
    create_enum :content_status, Publishable::STATUSES
  end
end

This will create the PostgreSQL ENUM type.

Now it's time to add your status to Article model.

rails g migration add_status_to_articles status:content_status

This will create a migration to add status to the Article model.

I recommend defining the default value as the following:
add_column :articles, :status, :content_status, default: 'draft'

Also, if you need to make various queries to your model based on the status, add an index:
add_index :articles, :status

Add the publishing ability to your article:

class Article < ApplicationRecord
  include Publishable
end

We are still missing all Rails scopes and other enum features.

The updated version of Publishable concern

module Publishable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  STATUSES = %w[draft reviewing published unpublished].freeze

  included do
    enum status: STATUSES.zip(STATUSES).to_h
  end
end

This adds all Rails scopes and magic. For example:

• Operator.published
• operator.published?
• operator.published!

Happy Hacking!