Advanced SQL in Rails - sql

I have 2 models
class User < AR
has_many :friends
end
class Friend < AR
# has a name column
end
I need to find all Users who are Friends with both 'Joe' and 'Jack'
Any idea how i can do this in rails?

One option is to put each of the names as arguments for individual INNER JOINS. In SQL it would be something like this:
SELECT users.* FROM users
INNER JOIN friends AS f1
ON users.id = f1.user_id
AND f1.name = 'Joe'
INNER JOIN friends AS f2
ON users.id = f2.user_id
AND f2.name = 'Jack'
Since it is INNER JOINS, it will only display results where the users table can be joined with both f1 and f2.
And to use it in Rails, maybe do it something like this:
class User < AR
has_many :friends
def self.who_knows(*friend_names)
joins((1..friend_names.length).map{ |n|
"INNER JOIN friends AS f#{n} ON users.id = f#{n}.user_id AND f#{n}.name = ?" }.join(" "),
*friend_names)
})
end
end
Which you then can call like this:
#users = User.who_knows("Joe", "Jack")

Possible way: User.all(:joins => :friends, :conditions => ["friends.name IN (?,?)", "Joe", "Jack"], :group => "users.id") and then iterate over the array to find users with 2 friends.
This is the best solution i got when tried to solve similar problem for myself. If you find the way to do it in pure sql or ActiveRecord – let me know please!

Although using hard-coded SQL as suggested by DanneManne will most often work, and is probably the way you'd want to go, it is not necessarily composable. As soon as you have hard-coded a table name, you can run into problems combining that into other queries where ActiveRecord may decide to alias the table.
So, at the cost of some extra complexity, we can solve this using some ARel as follows:
f = Friend.arel_table
User.
where(:id=>f.project(:user_id).where(f[:name].eq('Joe'))).
where(:id=>f.project(:user_id).where(f[:name].eq('Jack')))
This will use a pair of subqueries to do the job.
I'm fairly certain there's an ARel solution using joins as well, but and I can figure out how to compose that query in ARel, just not how to then use that query as the basis for an ActiveRecord query to get back User model instances.

Related

ActiveRecord query on many-to-many self join table

I have a many-to-many self join table called people that uses the following model:
class Person < ApplicationRecord
has_and_belongs_to_many :children,
class_name: "Person",
join_table: "children_parents",
foreign_key: "parent_id",
association_foreign_key: "child_id",
optional: true
has_and_belongs_to_many :parents,
class_name: "Person",
join_table: "children_parents",
foreign_key: "child_id",
association_foreign_key: "parent_id",
optional: true
end
If it isn't apparent in the above model - in addition to the people table in the database, there is also a children_parents join table with two foreign key index fields child_id and parent_id. This allows us to represent the many-to-many relationship between children and parents.
I want to query for siblings of a person, so I added the following method to the Person model:
def siblings
self.parents.map do |parent|
parent.children.reject { |child| child.id == self.id }
end.flatten.uniq
end
However, this makes three SQL queries:
Person Load (1.0ms) SELECT "people".* FROM "people" INNER JOIN "children_parents" ON "people"."id" = "children_parents"."parent_id" WHERE "children_parents"."child_id" = $1 [["child_id", 3]]
Person Load (0.4ms) SELECT "people".* FROM "people" INNER JOIN "children_parents" ON "people"."id" = "children_parents"."child_id" WHERE "children_parents"."parent_id" = $1 [["parent_id", 1]]
Person Load (0.4ms) SELECT "people".* FROM "people" INNER JOIN "children_parents" ON "people"."id" = "children_parents"."child_id" WHERE "children_parents"."parent_id" = $1 [["parent_id", 2]]
I know that it is possible to make this a single SQL query like so:
SELECT DISTINCT(p.*) FROM people p
INNER JOIN children_parents cp ON p.id = cp.child_id
WHERE cp.parent_id IN ($1, $2)
AND cp.child_id != $3
$1 and $2 are the parent ids of the person, and $3 is the person id.
Is there a way to do this query using ActiveRecord?
You can use something like this:
def siblings
Person.select('siblings.*').from('people AS siblings').where.not(id: id)
.where(
parents.joins(
'JOIN children_parents ON parent_id = people.id AND child_id = siblings.id'
).exists
)
end
Here you can see few strange things:
from to set table alias. And you should avoid this, because after such table aliasing active record will not help any more with column names from ruby: where(column: value).order(:column) - will not work, only plain sql strings are left
exists - I use it very often instead of joins. When you are joining many records to one, you are receiving duplicates, then comes distinct or group and new problems with them. Exists also gives isolation of query: table and columns in EXISTS expression are invisible for other parts of query. Bad part of using it in rails: at least 1 plain SQL is needed.
One weakness of this method: if you will call it for each record somewhere, then you will have 1 query for each record - N+1 problem.
Now few words about The Rails Way. Rails guide suggests to always use has_many :through instead of habtm, I seen it here: https://github.com/rubocop-hq/rails-style-guide.
Rails ideology as I understood it stands for speed of development and simplicity of maintenance. First means that performance does not matter (just imagine how many users you need to start have issues with it), second says that flexibility of plain SQL is good, but not in rails, in rails please make code as simple as possible (see rubocop defaults: 10 loc in method, 100 loc in class, and 4 complexity metrics always saying that your code is too complex). I mean, many real world rails projects are making queries with N+1, making ineffective queries, and this rarely becomes a problem
So, in such cases I would recommend to try includes, preload, eager_load.

Querying between two tables that share an association

New to seqeul and sql in general. I have two tables, groups and resources, that are associated many_to_many and therefore have a groups_resources join table. I also have a task table that has a foreign_key :group_id, :groups and is associated many_to_one with groups.
I'm trying to figure out what query to use that will allow my to get the resources that are able to do a task, based on a task's group. Do I have to do a complicated query via the `groups_resources' join table, or is there a more straightforward query/ way of setting up my associations?
Thanks!
I would structure the SQL statement as below. Which would provide you the resources objects that are associated with a specific task id through the join table.
SELECT r.*
FROM resources r
JOIN groups_resources gr ON gr.resources_id = r.id
JOIN groups g ON gr.group_id = g.id
JOIN task t ON t.id = g.id
WHERE t.id = ?
I think following is enough:
select res.* from resources res, task tk, groups_resources gr
where res.resource_id = gr.resource_id and
gr.group_id = tk.group_id and
tk.group_id=<>;
The other two answers are helpful for how to structure a SQL query, but thought I would answer my own question specifically as it relates to Sequel. Turns out there is a many_through_many plugin that makes this sort of querying simple, if you make both tables many_to_many :
Task.plugin :many_through_many
Task.many_through_many :resources,
:through =>[
[:groups_tasks, :task_id, :group_id],
[:groups, :id, :id],
[:groups_resources, :group_id, :resource_id]
]
Now you can just call something like task.resources on a Task instance, even though your tables don't explicitly associate tasks and resources.

Can I sort records by child record count with DataMapper (without using raw SQL)?

What I want to do feels pretty basic to me, but I'm not finding a way to do it using DataMapper without resorting to raw SQL. That would look something like:
select u.id, u.name, count(p.id) as post_count
from posts p
inner join users u on p.user_id = u.id
group by p.user_id
order by post_count desc;
The intention of the above query is to show me all users sorted by how many posts each user has. The closest I've found using DataMapper is aggregate, which doesn't give me back resource objects. What I'd like is some way to generate one query and get back standard DM objects back.
Assuming you have relationships
has_n, :posts
you should be able to do
User.get(id).posts.count
or
User.first(:some_id => id).posts.count
or
u = User.get(1)
u.posts.count
you can also chain conditions
User.get(1).posts.all(:date.gt => '2012-10-01')
see scopes and chaining here http://datamapper.org/docs/find.html
finally add the ordering
User.get(1).posts.all(:order => [:date.desc])

Convert some SQL query to active record

So, I have this "advanced" query (not much, really) and I would like to translate it into Ruby Active Record's syntax.
SELECT microposts.*
FROM microposts
WHERE user_id IN
( SELECT r.followed_id as uid
FROM relationships r
WHERE follower_id = 1
UNION
SELECT u.id as uid
FROM users as u
WHERE id = 1
)
ORDER BY microposts.created_at DESC
The idea was to retrieve all microposts for user 1 AND user 1 followed users in desc creation order, but I really don't know how to translate this easily using Active Record's syntax.
Any thought ?
PS : As asked here is some rails context :
I have 3 models : Microposts, Users, Relationships.
Relationships is a join table handling all users relationships (follower/followed stuff).
Users have many followed_users/followers through relationships.
Users have many microhoops, and microhoops have one user.
Thanks.
No idea about Ruby but the SQL can be simplified to:
SELECT microposts.*
FROM microposts
WHERE user_id IN
( SELECT r.followed_id as uid
FROM relationships r
WHERE follower_id = 1
)
OR user_id = 1
ORDER BY microposts.created_at DESC
My answer will assume (since you've provided no ruby/rails-context outside of your raw SQL query) you have a User model, a Micropost model through relation :microposts, and a Relationship model through relation :following. User has many Micropost and Relationship instances related. You could do
u = User.find(1)
user.microposts + user.following.microposts
or you could move this into a method within Micropost
def self.own_and_following(user)
user.microposts + user.following.microposts
end
And call Micropost.own_and_following(User.find(1)).
This may not be what you're looking for, but in given the above mentioned likely relations you have in your Rails application, it sounds like something similar to this should work.
Your query is very specific, therefore your best bet would be to write a good portion of it using SQL, or try a gem like squeel that can help out generating very customized SQL from ActiveRecord.
Nevertheless, this should do the work with no additional gems :
user_id = ... #Get the user_id you want to test
Micropost.where("user_id IN
( SELECT r.followed_id as uid
FROM relationships r
WHERE follower_id = ? )
OR user_id = ?
", user_id, user_id).order("created_at desc")
I managed to do it using only where, seems a lot like a find_by_sql to me, and I don't know which one would be better :
Micropost.order('created_at DESC').
where('user_id in (select r.followed_id as uid from relationships as r where follower_id = ?) or user_id = ?', user.id, user.id)
Don't know how good this is, but it seem to be working.

Finding unique records, ordered by field in association, with PostgreSQL and Rails 3?

UPDATE: So thanks to #Erwin Brandstetter, I now have this:
def self.unique_users_by_company(company)
users = User.arel_table
cards = Card.arel_table
users_columns = User.column_names.map { |col| users[col.to_sym] }
cards_condition = cards[:company_id].eq(company.id).
and(cards[:user_id].eq(users[:id]))
User.joins(:cards).where(cards_condition).group(users_columns).
order('min(cards.created_at)')
end
... which seems to do exactly what I want. There are two shortcomings that I would still like to have addressed, however:
The order() clause is using straight SQL instead of Arel (couldn't figure it out).
Calling .count on the query above gives me this error:
NoMethodError: undefined method 'to_sym' for
#<Arel::Attributes::Attribute:0x007f870dc42c50> from
/Users/neezer/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.3-p0/gems/activerecord-3.1.1/lib/active_record/relation/calculations.rb:227:in
'execute_grouped_calculation'
... which I believe is probably related to how I'm mapping out the users_columns, so I don't have to manually type in all of them in the group clause.
How can I fix those two issues?
ORIGINAL QUESTION:
Here's what I have so far that solves the first part of my question:
def self.unique_users_by_company(company)
users = User.arel_table
cards = Card.arel_table
cards_condition = cards[:company_id].eq(company.id)
.and(cards[:user_id].eq(users[:id]))
User.where(Card.where(cards_condition).exists)
end
This gives me 84 unique records, which is correct.
The problem is that I need those User records ordered by cards[:created_at] (whichever is earliest for that particular user). Appending .order(cards[:created_at]) to the scope at the end of the method above does absolutely nothing.
I tried adding in a .joins(:cards), but that give returns 587 records, which is incorrect (duplicate Users). group_by as I understand it is practically useless here as well, because of how PostgreSQL handles it.
I need my result to be an ActiveRecord::Relation (so it's chainable) that returns a list of unique users who have cards that belong to a given company, ordered by the creation date of their first card... with a query that's written in Ruby and is database-agnostic. How can I do this?
class Company
has_many :cards
end
class Card
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :company
end
class User
has_many :cards
end
Please let me know if you need any other information, or if I wasn't clear in my question.
The query you are looking for should look like this one:
SELECT user_id, min(created_at) AS min_created_at
FROM cards
WHERE company_id = 1
GROUP BY user_id
ORDER BY min(created_at)
You can join in the table user if you need columns of that table in the result, else you don't even need it for the query.
If you don't need min_created_at in the SELECT list, you can just leave it away.
Should be easy to translate to Ruby (which I am no good at).
To get the whole user record (as I derive from your comment):
SELECT u.*,
FROM user u
JOIN (
SELECT user_id, min(created_at) AS min_created_at
FROM cards
WHERE company_id = 1
GROUP BY user_id
) c ON u.id = c.user_id
ORDER BY min_created_at
Or:
SELECT u.*
FROM user u
JOIN cards c ON u.id = c.user_id
WHERE c.company_id = 1
GROUP BY u.id, u.col1, u.col2, .. -- You have to spell out all columns!
ORDER BY min(c.created_at)
With PostgreSQL 9.1+ you can simply write:
GROUP BY u.id
(like in MySQL) .. provided id is the primary key.
I quote the release notes:
Allow non-GROUP BY columns in the query target list when the primary
key is specified in the GROUP BY clause (Peter Eisentraut)
The SQL standard allows this behavior, and because of the primary key,
the result is unambiguous.
The fact that you need it to be chainable complicates things, otherwise you can either drop down into SQL yourself or only select the column(s) you need via select("users.id") to get around the Postgres issue. Because at the heart of it your query is something like
SELECT users.id
FROM users
INNER JOIN cards ON users.id = cards.user_id
WHERE cards.company_id = 1
GROUP BY users.id, DATE(cards.created_at)
ORDER BY DATE(cards.created_at) DESC
Which in Arel syntax is more or less:
User.select("id").joins(:cards).where(:"cards.company_id" => company.id).group_by("users.id, DATE(cards.created_at)").order("DATE(cards.created_at) DESC")