Is it possible to access attribute that is delegated to another model? - ruby-on-rails

When creating app I had model Order with attribute delivery_option. After some time, I had to create "higher level" order to group orders and created MainOrder.
Now, Order delegates :delivery_option to MainOrder, but about 70% of MainOrders has delivery_option == nil because where created during migration, just to cover Orders from past. I couldn't fill up main_order.delivery_option = order.delivery_option because there can be many orders in one main_order, each with different :delivery_option.
Is it possible to somehow access order.delivery_option without hitting order.main_order.delivery_option?
code looks like this:
class MainOrder
has_many :orders
end
class Order
belongs_to :main_order
delegates :delivery_option, to: main_order, allow_nil: true
end

You can use the attributes method returning a hash with attribute values:
order = Order.first
# fetches delivery_option from the main_order
order.delivery_option
# returns value stored in orders table belonging to the order
order.attributes["delivery_option"]
# you can also use
order.attribute(:delivery_option)

Related

Defining attributes at runtime based on data from related object

I'm building an application where users are part of an Organisation. An organisation has many Lists, which in turn have many ListItems.
Now, I would like for admin users to be able to specify which attributes are available on list items, based on the organisation they belong to (or rather, on the organisation their list belongs to), without having to touch any code.
So far, when defining attributes that are not bound to a specific column in the database, I have used document_serializable, a nifty little gem (based on virtus) which serializes virtual attributes to a JSONB column in the db. I like this approach, because I get all of virtus' goodies (types, coercion, validations, etc.), and because data ends up sitting in a JSONB column, meaning it can be loaded quickly, indexed, and searched through with relative ease.
I would like to keep using this approach when adding these user-defined attributes on the fly. So I'd like to do something like:
class ListItem < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :list
delegate :organisation, to: :list
organisation.list_attributes.each do |a, t|
attribute a, t
end
end
Where Organisation#list_attributes returns the user-defined hash of attribute names and their associated types, which, for example, might look like:
{
name: String,
age: Integer
}
As you might have guessed, this does not work, because organisation.list_attributes.each actually runs in the context of ListItem, which is an instance of Class, and Class doesn't have an #organisation method. I hope that's worded in a way that makes sense1.
I've tried using after_initialize, but at that point in the object's lifecycle, #attribute is owned by ActiveRecord::AttributeMethods::Read and not DocumentSerializable::ClassMethods, so it's an entirely different method and I can't figure out wether I can still access the one I need, and wether that would even work.
Another alternative would be to find the organisation in question in some explicit way, Organisation#find-style, but I honestly don't know where I should store the information necessary to do so.
So, my question: at the moment of instantiating (initializing or loading2) a record, is there a way I can retrieve a hash stored in a database column of one of its relations? Or am I trying to build this in a completely misguided way, and if so, how else should I go about it?
1 To clarify, if I were to use the hash directly like so:
class ListItem < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :list
delegate :organisation, to: :list
{
name: String,
age: Integer
}.each do |a, t|
attribute a, t
end
end
it would work, my issue is solely with getting a record's relation at this earlier point in time.
2 My understanding is that Rails runs a model's code whenever a record of that type is created or loaded from the database, meaning the virtual attributes are defined anew every time this happens, which is why I'm asking how to do this in both cases.
at the moment of instantiating (initializing or loading) a record, is
there a way I can retrieve a hash stored in a database column of one
of its relations?
Yes. This is fairly trivial as long as your relations are setup correctly / simply. Lets say we have these three models:
class ListItem < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :list
end
class List < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :organisation
has_many :list_items
end
class Organisation < ApplicationRecord
has_many :lists
end
We can instantiate a ListItem and then retrieve data from anyone of its parents.
#list_item = ListItem.find(5) # assume that the proper inherited
foreign_keys exist for this and
its parent
#list = #list_item.list
#hash = #list.organisation.special_hash_of_org
And if we wanted to do this at every instance of a ListItem, we can use Active Record Callbacks like this:
class ListItem < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :list
# this is called on ListItem.new and whenever we pull from our DB
after_initialize do |list_item|
puts "You have initialized a ListItem!"
list = list_item.list
hash = list.organisation.special_hash_of_org
end
end
But after_initialize feels like a strange usage for this kind of thing. Maybe a helper method would be a better option!

Modelling a collection of records that act as as a group

I'm looking for orientation for either a concrete or abstract approach in Ruby-Like (Rails 4/5) to model the following requirement or user story:
Given a model, let's call it PurchaseOrder with the following attributes:
amount_to_produce
amount_taken_from_stock
placement_date
delivery_date
product_id
client_id
As a user, i want to be able to see a table list of these PurchaseOrder and, when necessary, group them.
Detail Info: When a collection of PurchaseOrder is grouped, that grouped collection should behave exactly like a PurchaseOrder, in the sense that it must be displayed as a record in the table, filtering operations should work on the grouped record as they do on single PurchaseOrder instances, same goes for pagination and sorting. Moreover, the group must cache or at least i'm thinking it that way, the sum of amount_to_produce, amount_taken_from_stock, the minimum placement_date among all placement dates and last but not least, the minimum delivery_date also among them all.
Im thinking in modelling this implicitly in the PurchaseOrder like this:
Class PurchaseOrder < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :group, class_name: PurchaseOrder.model_name.to_s, inverse_of: :purchase_orders
# purchase order can represent a "group" of purchase orders
has_many :purchase_orders, inverse_of: :group, foreign_key: :group_id
end
This way it would achieve the purpose of been displayed in the table view easily, filtering pagination and sorting would work out of the box and just by scoping records with group_id nil, the grouped records can be left out of the table.
However i'm foreseeing immediate drawbacks:
When updating a group member attribute, say amount_to_produce, the parent cached amount_to_produce should be updated also, same for the other three attributes. This would probably led to model callbacks before_update, which i tend not to use unless it concerns behaviour of the single instance itself.
When ungrouping a member, same history
Same when destroying a member of the group (it can and will happen).
For 1. we could imply that there's no need to cache the amounts or date attributes in the parent PurchaseOrder, since we can override the getter for those attributes and return the sum / min of the children if purchase_orders.size.nonzero?, however, this smells like something wrong.
So summing it up, i would like if not the best, an optimistic approach to model this scenario and regarding the method to group and ungroup members to / from a group, ideas on what's the best domain place to implement it, i'm thinking of a concern like Groupable.
Pd: For each group, the client_id of the group will be a default seeded client called "Multiple Customers", and the product_id, the same as the product_id of the children, since it's a restriction that only PurchaseOrder with same product_id can be grouped, no groups with different product_id's can be grouped.
Thanks.
I would split this into two models, a PurchaseOrderGroup, and a PurchaseOrder.
class PurchaseOrderGroup < ApplicationRecord
has_many :purchase_orders
belongs_to :product
def aggregate_pos
PurchaseOrder.where(purchase_order_group_id: self.id).
group(:purchase_order_group_id).
pluck('sum(amount_to_produce), min(delivery_date), ...')
end
end
class PurchaseOrder < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :purchase_order_group
end
I would create a PurchaseOrderGroup for each PurchaseOrder even if there is only one, which maintains the same interface. You can then define delegate methods on the PurchaseOrderGroup which grab the appropriate sum, min, max etc of the children - aggregate queries should make short work of that. See above aggregate_pos() method. Easy enough to cache the results of this in the PurchaseOrderGroup class. Deleting or adding PurchaseOrder objects is easy then, just call aggregate_pos() again.
This also cleans up the product_id dilemma, just put that attribute on the group rather than the PurchaseOrder. That way it is impossible for two PurchaseOrders in the same group to have different product_ids.

Rails attr_accessor attribute on parent model available in children

Context:
Each Order has many Items & Logistics. Each Item & Logistic (as well as the Order itself) have many Revenues.
I am creating Order + Items & Logistics at once using an accepts_nested_attributes_for on Order. However, Revenues gets created using an after_create callback on each of the models Order, Item, and Logistics. Why? Because given the difference in interpretation in these models, the code reads cleaner this way. (But if this way of doing it is what's causing this question to be asked, I will obviously reconsider!)
One key attribute that I need to store in Revenues is pp_charge_id. But pp_charge_id is not something that either Order, Items, or Logistics needs to worry about. I've attached an attr_accessor :pp_charge_id to Order, so that one works fine, however, once I'm in the child Items or Logistics models, I no longer have access to pp_charge_id which again I need to save an associated Revenue. How should I do this?
Controller Code:
#order = Order.new(params) #params includes Order params, and nested params for child Item & Logistics
#order.pp_charge_id = "cash"
#order.save #I need this to not only save the Order, the children Item & Logistics, but then to also create the associated Revenue for each of the aforementioned 3 models
ORDER Model Code:
has_many :items
has_many :revenues
attr_accessor :pp_charge_id
after_create :create_revenue
def create_revenue
self.revenues.create(pp_charge_id: self.pp_charge_id)
end
#This WORKS as expected because of the attr_accessor
ITEM/ LOGISTIC model code:
has_many :revenues
belongs_to :order
after_create :create_revenue
def create_revenue
self.revenues.create(pp_charge_id: self.order.pp_charge_id)
end
#This DOES NOT work because self.order.pp_charge_id is nil
ORDER model code:
belongs_to :order
belongs_to :item
belongs_to :logistic
Again I understand the attr_accessor is not designed to persist across a request or even if the Order itself is reloaded. But it also doesn't make sense to save it redundantly in a table that has no use for it. If the only way to do this is to put the pp_charge_id into the params for the order and save everything all at once (including Revenues), then let me know because I know how to do that. (Again, would just rather avoid that because of how it's interpreted: params are coming from User, Revenue data is something I'm providing)
I think if you want the order's pp_charge_id to apply to all its items and logistics, I'd put all that into the order's after_create callback:
# order.rb
def create_revenue
revenues.create(pp_charge_id: pp_charge_id)
items.each {|i| i.revenues.create(pp_charge_id: pp_charge_id)}
logistics.each {|l| l.revenues.create(pp_charge_id: pp_charge_id)}
end
EDIT: Alternately, you could add inverse_of to your belongs_to declarations, and then I believe Item#create_revenue would see the same Order instance that you set in the controller. So if you also added an attr_accessor to the Item class, you could write its create_revenue like this:
# item.rb
def create_revenue
revenues.create(pp_charge_id: pp_charge_id || order.pp_charge_id)
end
This should cover the new requirement you've mentioned in your comment.
instead of using after_create and accessors you should consider having a proper method that does exactly what you need, ie:
Order.create_with_charge(:cash, params)
i find it disturbing to persist redundant information in the database just because the code reads cleaner that way!

ActiveRecord hide columns based on context

I have a scenario where I generate reports from certain ActiveRecord models.
I have multiple roles in the application. Depending on the roles, I want to show or hide certain columns. The thing is as the number of screens/pages increase, keeping a track of these can be become a nightmare.
Is there a way in Rails, where, I can stop returning values for certain columns depending on certain conditions. For e.g. I will the object returned from a ActiveRecord.Where will have data for some columns masked depending on User's role.
You can do that using active record select method. Select only those attributes which current user role can access and pass to view.
For this you can create array of accessible feilds for paticular role in your initializer. For this create a initializer.rb file under config/initializers/. Add code something like:
ADMIN = ['feild1', 'feild2'..., 'feild10']
MANAGER = ['feild1', 'feild2'..., 'feild5']
USER = ['feild1', 'feild2', 'feild3']
in your action write code something like :
Model.select(eval(current_user.role.upcase))
In view you need to check if attribute exist in your retured activerecord or not. Otherview you will get ActiveModel::MissingAttributeError: for this:
object.has_attribute? 'att_name'
Or you can rescue it with nil
object.att_name rescue nil
I literally just wrote an answer about this - you'll probably benefit from it.
Model
It seems that if you want to return specific ActiveRecord data, there are certain ways to limit the attributes the class builds. More specifically, you can make certain methods "private" - preventing your model from returning them.
Although I'm not 100% sure on this, I can say that there are two "levels" to your question -- the database data & the model's construction. Although I don't have anything for the ActiveRecord side of things, the model can "privatize" certain attributes, preventing them from being available in other parts of your app.
A Rails model is a class - populated with attributes. This means you should be able to control which attributes are available by the Role your user is part of:
#app/models/role.rb
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
#columns id | name | attributes | created_at | updated_at
#"attributes" can be used to assign an array
has_many :users, inverse_of: :role
end
#app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :role, inverse_of: :users
role.attributes.each do |attr|
private attr.to_sym
end
end
This will override the attributes pulled from the db, allowing you to determine which ones are available.
Of course, a very rudimentary procedure.
--
ActiveRecord
The best way around this will be to use ActiveRecord to specifically select the attributes / columns you want. To do this, I'm not sure of the absolute best way, but perhaps using a default_scope would be beneficial:
#app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :role
def attributes
case role_id
when "1"
attrs = []
when "2"
attrs = []
when "3"
attrs = []
end
end
default_scope (select: attributes)
end
Again, pretty rudimentary. I'd be interested in seeing a more integrated way of doing this.

Conditional model updating -- Rails 3.1

I have two tables:
stores
raw_stores_data
The raw_stores_data is received from a third party daily.
I'd update certain fields of the stores model if those fields have been modified for that record in raw_stores_data.
Currently I have a bunch of conditional statements that check each of those fields. Is there any better way to code this?
new_data = raw_stores_data.all.select do |item|
item.store_id.present?
end
new_data.each do |item|
if item.field1 != item.stores.field1
...
...
...
# update record with hash of fields to update created above
end
You could add an association and special mutators to the 'raw' model that know how manipulate the 'stores' object. This serves to keep the model code in the model. Thin controller, comprehensive models, etc.
class Store < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :raw_stores_data
end
class RawStoresData < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :store
def field1=(value)
store.field1 = value
store.save!
field1 = value
end
end
I'm hand waving at some of the details, and you might want to reverse the direction of the association or make it go both directions.
EDIT:
You would use this as such:
raw_data = RawStoreData.find(param[:id]) # or new or however you get this object
raw_data.field1 = param[:field1]
The act of assigning will use the 'field1=' method, and make the change to the associated store object. If you're worried about saving unnecessarily, you could conditionalize in that method to only save if the value changed.
I hope this is clearer.

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