This is a somewhat more complicated version of the question I asked previously.
Background:
So what I need is to display a list of articles. An article belongs to a media outlet. A media is located in a particular country and publishes articles in a particular language. So the data structure is as follows:
Article belongs to Media; Media has many Articles
Media belongs to a Country; Country has many Media
Media belongs to a Language; Language has many Media
Now, if I wanted to filter articles by media, I could use the following class method (I prefer class methods over scopes, because I am passing a parameter and am using a conditional statement inside the method):
def self.filter_by_media(parameter)
if parameter == "all"
all
else
where(media_id: parameter)
end
end
Question:
How to write a class method that would filter Articles based by properties of its associated model, the Media? For example, I want to get a list of articles published by media located a certain counrty or in several countries (there is also a default country when the user does not make any choice). Here’s what I tried:
# parameter can be either string 'default' or an array of id’s
def self.filter_by_country(parameter)
if parameter == "default"
joins(:media).where(media: [country_id: 1])
else
joins(:media).where(media: [country_id: parameter])
end
end
But that doesn’t work, and I am not conversant enough with SQL to figure out how to make this work. Could you please help?
Update:
I’m trying out #carlosramireziii's suggestion. I changed arrays into hashes (don't know what possessed me to use arrays in the first place), but I’m getting the following error in the Rails console (to avoid confusion, in my database, media is called agency):
def self.filter_by_country(parameter)
if parameter == "default"
joins(:agency).where(agency: {country_id: 1})
else
joins(:agency).where(agency: {country_id: parameter})
end
end
in Rails console:
> Article.filter_by_country('default')
=> Article Load (1.9ms) SELECT "articles".* FROM "articles" INNER JOIN "agencies" ON "agencies"."id" = "articles"."agency_id" WHERE "agency"."country_id" = 1
PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR: missing FROM-clause entry for table "agency"
LINE 1: ...ON "agencies"."id" = "articles"."agency_id" WHERE "agency"."...
^
: SELECT "articles".* FROM "articles" INNER JOIN "agencies" ON "agencies"."id" = "articles"."agency_id" WHERE "agency"."country_id" = 1
Update 2
My mistake in the Update section above is that I did not pluralize agency in the where clause. The part where(agency: {country_id: 1}) should have read where(agencies: {country_id: 1}). The pluralized word agencies here refers to the name of the table that is being joined.
You are very close, you just need to use a nested hash instead of an array.
Try this
def self.filter_by_country(parameter)
if parameter == "default"
joins(:media).where(media: { country_id: 1 })
else
joins(:media).where(media: { country_id: parameter })
end
end
Related
In Rails 5, what is the difference between update and update_attributes methods. I'm seeing the following results for both the methods
Returns true/false
Checking for active record validation
Call backs are triggered
and also regarding update method a new thing was introduced in active record relation. I'm not able to understand it. What is the difference?
Moreover are we using update_attributes in Rails 5. It's not there in active record documentation.
I'm confused with all update methods. I need clarity
As of Rails 4.0.2, #update returns false if the update failed. Before Rails 4.0.2, #update returned the object that got updated. The main difference therefore was the return value. After this change, #update_attributes is just an alias of #update. It seems there are talks to deprecate #update_attributes in Rails 6 which is not released yet.
https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/31998
https://github.com/rails/rails/commit/5645149d3a27054450bd1130ff5715504638a5f5
From the rails 5 files it seems to me update can be used to update multiple objects(array of records) but update_attributes only work on single records otherwise both are same
From rails core files for update_attributes:
Updates a single attribute and saves the record.
This is especially useful for boolean flags on existing records. Also note that
Validation is skipped.
\Callbacks are invoked.
updated_at/updated_on column is updated if that column is available.
Updates all the attributes that are dirty in this object.
This method raises an ActiveRecord::ActiveRecordError if the
attribute is marked as readonly.
def update_attribute(name, value)
name = name.to_s
verify_readonly_attribute(name)
public_send("#{name}=", value)
save(validate: false)
end
For Update
Updates an object (or multiple objects) and saves it to the database, if validations pass.
The resulting object is returned whether the object was saved successfully to the database or not.
==== Parameters
+id+ - This should be the id or an array of ids to be updated.
+attributes+ - This should be a hash of attributes or an array of hashes.
==== Examples
# Updates one record
Person.update(15, user_name: "Samuel", group: "expert")
# Updates multiple records
people = { 1 => { "first_name" => "David" }, 2 => { "first_name" => "Jeremy" } }
Person.update(people.keys, people.values)
# Updates multiple records from the result of a relation
people = Person.where(group: "expert")
people.update(group: "masters")
Note: Updating a large number of records will run an UPDATE
query for each record, which may cause a performance issue.
When running callbacks is not needed for each record update,
it is preferred to use {update_all}[rdoc-ref:Relation#update_all]
for updating all records in a single query.
def update(id, attributes)
if id.is_a?(Array)
id.map { |one_id| find(one_id) }.each_with_index { |object, idx|
object.update(attributes[idx])
}
else
if ActiveRecord::Base === id
raise ArgumentError,
"You are passing an instance of ActiveRecord::Base to `update`. " \
"Please pass the id of the object by calling `.id`."
end
object = find(id)
object.update(attributes)
object
end
end
When we are working with update_column that time update is done on the database level there is no any contact with the rails ORM so whatever logic we have implemented like callbacks and validations all will be waste and wont be useful as this is going to be bypassed.
I found this article explained really well in just 30 seconds.
.update
Use update when you want to return false, for example in an if/else:
if record.update(params)
display_success
else
react_to_problem
end
.update!
Use update! when you want an error (for example: to avoid erroring silently, which could be very bad if an error was unexpected and you needed to know about it to fix it!):
record.update!(params) # raises is invalid
'update' respects the validation rules on model, while 'update_attributes' ignores validations.
First, some background:
I have a Company model, a Project model and a Task model. A Project belongs to a company and a Task belongs_to a Project.
The Project model holds several attributes: company_id, date. These attributes uniquely identify a project
I am letting the users create a task by API by POSTing to a URL that contains the details necessary to identify the Project. For example:
POST /projects/<comnpany_name>/<date>/tasks/
In order to make life easier for the users, in case there is no project with the given details, I'd like to create the project on the fly by the given details, and then to create the task and assign it to the project.
...And my problem is:
When there is a problem to create the project, let's say that the company name is not valid, what is the right way to return the error message and communicate to the user?
I'll explain what I mean: I added a create_by_name_and_company_name method to the Project:
def self.create_by_name_and_company_name(name, company_name)
if company = Company.find_by_name(company_name)
project = Project.create(company_id: company.id,
name: name)
else # cannot create this project, trying to communicate the error
project = Project.new(name: name)
project.errors.add(:company, 'must have a valid name')
end
company
end
I was hoping that by returning an unsaved Company object, with errors set, will be a good way communicate the error (This is similar to how rails work when there's a validation error).
The problem is that when calling valid? on the company object, it removed the error I wrote there and adds the regular validation errors (in this case, company can't be blank).
And a bonus question...
And there is a conceptual problem as well: since I'm creating a model by providing parameters that are being used to create the actual attributes, they doesn't always map nicely to the errors[:attr] hash. In this case it is not so bad and I'm using the company field for the company name parameter, but I guess this can get messier when the parameters provided to the create method are less similar to the model attributes.
So what is the preferred approach to tackle that problem? Is there something basically wrong with that approach? if so, what is the preferred approach?
About overriding the default rails validation error message, you need to write your validation constraint like this:
validates_presence_of :name, :message => "must be a valid name"
I figure that it is best to avoid such nesting and stick to a shallower API.
I have a model Page, which can have Posts on it. What I want to do is get every Page, plus the most recent Post on that page. If the Page has no Posts, I still want the page. (Sound familiar? This is a LEFT JOIN in SQL).
Here is what I currently have:
Page.objects.annotate(most_recent_post=Max('post__post_time'))
This only gets Pages, but it doesn't get Posts. How can I get the Posts as well?
Models:
class Page(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length=50)
created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True)
enabled = models.BooleanField(default = True)
class Post(models.Model):
user = models.ForeignKey(User)
page = models.ForeignKey(Page)
post_time = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add = True)
Depending on the relationship between the two, you should be able to follow the relationships quite easily, and increase performance by using select_related
Taking this:
class Page(models.Model):
...
class Post(models.Model):
page = ForeignKey(Page, ...)
You can follow the forward relationship (i.e. get all the posts and their associated pages) efficiently using select_related:
Post.objects.select_related('page').all()
This will result in only one (larger) query where all the page objects are prefetched.
In the reverse situation (like you have) where you want to get all pages and their associated posts, select_related won't work. See this,this and this question for more information about what you can do.
Probably your best bet is to use the techniques described in the django docs here: Following Links Backward.
After you do:
pages = Page.objects.annotate(most_recent_post=Max('post__post_time'))
posts = [page.post_set.filter(post_time=page.most_recent_post) for page in pages]
And then posts[0] should have the most recent post for pages[0] etc. I don't know if this is the most efficient solution, but this was the solution mentioned in another post about the lack of left joins in django.
You can create a database view that will contain all Page columns alongside with with necessary latest Post columns:
CREATE VIEW `testapp_pagewithrecentpost` AS
SELECT testapp_page.*, testapp_post.* -- I suggest as few post columns as possible here
FROM `testapp_page` LEFT JOIN `testapp_page`
ON test_page.id = test_post.page_id
AND test_post.post_time =
( SELECT MAX(test_post.post_time)
FROM test_post WHERE test_page.id = test_post.page_id );
Then you need to create a model with flag managed = False (so that manage.py sync won't break). You can also use inheritance from abstract Model to avoid column duplication:
class PageWithRecentPost(models.Model): # Or extend abstract BasePost ?
# Page columns goes here
# Post columns goes here
# We use LEFT JOIN, so all columns from the
# 'post' model will need blank=True, null=True
class Meta:
managed = False # Django will not handle creation/reset automatically
By doing that you can do what you initially wanted, so fetch from both tables in just one query:
pages_with_recent_post = PageWithRecentPost.objects.filter(...)
for page in pages_with_recent_post:
print page.name # Page column
print page.post_time # Post column
However this approach is not drawback free:
It's very DB engine-specific
You'll need to add VIEW creation SQL to your project
If your models are complex it's very likely that you'll need to resolve table column name clashes.
Model based on a database view will very likely be read-only (INSERT/UPDATE will fail).
It adds complexity to your project. Allowing for multiple queries is a definitely simpler solution.
Changes in Page/Post will require re-creating the view.
I am very new to RoR so this may be very fundamental. My structure keeps getting a level deeper and I can't figure out how to find the id anymore.
First you have a Company which can have many Users. Users sign in and are authenticated and the current_user is saved in a cookie with the Session.
Since the User has one Company I can always find the Company.id through the current_user.
Next a Company has many Farms. In farms create I can get the company id from the user cookie and the farm id is new so that works, and in farm show Rails knows which farm it is supposed to show. So that level works.
Now I want to add that a Farm has many Blocks. I am adding Blocks through the associated Farm show page, but the Blocks_controller doesn't know what farm page it is on (as far as I can tell, if it can any info is appreciated).
Here is the FarmsController create that works:
def create
company_id = current_user.company_id
#company = Company.find(company_id)
#farm = #company.farms.build(params[:farm])
if #farm.save
flash[:success] = "farm created"
redirect_to root_path
else
render 'pages/home'
end
end
And this code just complains that it doesn't know what id I am talking about:
BlocksController
def create
#farm = Farm.find(params[:id])
#block = #farm.blocks.build(params[:block])
end
This is displaying on the associated Farm show page, so if there is a way to capture the id I would love to know what it is.
Thank you for your time.
The three easiest ways to get that id is to:
Pass in that farm_id using a hidden form field. When creating the link to your blocks/new form just pass in the farm_id ie use a path like new_blocks_path(:id => #farm.id) inside your blocks controller you will want to make sure that the farm_id is set on the Block model.
def new
#block = new Block
#block.farm_id = params[:farm_id]
end
Then if you are using form for the farm_id field (which should probably be of type hidden), it should contain the right id. Now change the first line in the "create" block method to
#farm = Farm.find(params[:block][:farm_id])
You can combine the process of adding the blocks and the farms using nested forms. Take a look at http://railscasts.com/episodes/196-nested-model-form-part-1 for how to do this.
You can use nested RESTful resources to make sure that within the blocks controller you always have access to the farm id. For more information about how to do this try take a look at http://railscasts.com/episodes/139-nested-resources
I have a big, flat table:
id
product_id
attribute1
attribute2
attribute3
attribute4
Here is how I want users to get to products:
See a list of unique values for attribute1.
Clicking one of those gets you a list of unique values for attribute2.
Clicking one of those gets you a list of unique values for attribute3.
Clicking one of those gets you a list of unique values for attribute4.
Clicking one of those shows you the relevant products.
I have been coding Rails for about 4 years now. I just can't unthink my current approach to this problem.
I have major writer's block. Seems like such an easy problem. But I either code it with 4 different "step" methods in my controller, or I try to write one "search" method that attempts to divine the last level you selected, and all the previous values that you selected.
Both are major YUCK and I keep deleting my work.
What is the most elegant way to do this?
Here is a solution that may be an option. Just off the top of my head and not tested (so there is probably a bit more elegant solution). You could use chained scopes in your model:
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
scope :with_capacity, lambda { |*args| args.first.nil? ? nil : where(:capacity=>args.first) }
scope :with_weight, lambda { |*args| args.first.nil? ? nil : where(:weight=>args.first) }
scope :with_color, lambda { |*args| args.first.nil? ? nil : where(:color=>args.first) }
scope :with_manufacturer, lambda { |*args| args.first.nil? ? nil : where(:manufacturer=>args.first) }
self.available_attributes(products,attribute)
products.collect{|product| product.send(attribute)}.uniq
end
end
The code above will give you a scope for each attribute. If you pass a parameter to the scope, then it will give you the products with that attribute value. If the argument is nil, then the scope will return the full set (I think ;-). You could keep track of the attributes they are drilling down in in the session with 2 variables (page_attribute and page_attribute_value) in your controller. Then you call the entire chain to get your list of products (if you want to use them on the page). Next you can get the attribute values by passing in the set of products and the attribute name to Product.available_attributes. Note that this method (Product.available_attributes) is a total hack and would be inefficient for a large set of data, so you may want to make this another scope and use :select=>"DISTINCT(your_attribute)" or something more database efficient instead of iterating thru the full set of products as I did in the hack method.
class ProductsController < ApplicationController
def show
session[params[:page_attribute].to_sym] = params[:page_attribute_value]
#products = Product.all.with_capacity(session[:capacity]).with_weight(session[:weight]).with_color(session[:color]).with_manufacturer(session[:manufacturer])
#attr_values = Product.available_attributes(#products,params[:page_attribute])
end
end
Again, I want to warn you that I did not test this code, so its totally possible that some of the syntax is incorrect, but hopefully this will give you a starting point. Holla if you have any questions about my (psuedo) code.