Ruby Rails - Structuring Nested Objects - ruby-on-rails

Question

With my current project, I'm receiving a large JSON file that I'm parsing and storing into my database. The problem is I feel like I'm structuring my database in a very inefficient way.
Example of JSON:
{
first_name: "John",
records: {
ids: [110, 725, 2250],
count: [1, 1, 6]
},
items: {
top: {
title: "My top",
values: { value: [51, 50, 70] }
},
middle: {
title: "Middle Stuff",
values: { value: [51] }
},
},
values: {
health: 100,
strength: 250,
mana: 50
}
}
As you can see the JSON is fairly complex, with nested Objects.
While building it, I started with the main Object ( user ), then slowly started adding more objects. Values was easy, so I added that as another table and just with a reference to the user_id.
Then I did records, which is a bit more complex, but works. However, I'm very worried about the most nested parts, that could be 5+ objects deep. I feel like I shouldn't have an entire column row for a simple value.
What would be the best way to improve on this? Should I somehow crunch the data and store it differently?
Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

// JSON response
{
"name": "John Smith",
...
"progression": {
"levels": [{
"name": "Level 1",
"bosses": [
{
"name": "Boss 1",
"difficultyCompleted": "Hard"
},
{
"name": "Boss 2",
"difficultyCompleted": "Hard"
}]
},{
"name": "Level 2",
"bosses": [
{
"name": "Boss 3",
"difficultyCompleted": "Normal"
},
{
"name": "Boss 4",
"difficultyCompleted": "Easy"
}]
}
}
}
In this example JSON, there is a few layers for each boss that the user has completed. What I would have thought to do initially was to create models and tables but that seemed like it would be wasteful not only in memeory, but also would take longer to fetch the current progression for Boss 4.
Example:
User has_one Progression.
Progression has_one Levels.
Levels has_many Dungeons.
Dungeons has_many bosses.
What I did instead was trying to compress the bosses into a single field, and just convert the JSON at runtime.
So, instead my structure would be like this.
User has_one Progression.
Progression has_many Dungeons.
Models:
// Progression.rb
class Progression < ApplicationRecord
has_many :dungeons
def self.initialize(params={})
params = params['levels']
prog = Progression.new()
params.each do |dungeon|
prog.dungeons.append( Dungeon.initialize( dungeon ) )
end
return prog
end
end
// Dungeon.rb
class Dungeon < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :progression
def self.initialize(params={})
Dungeon.new(params.reject { |k| !Dungeon.attribute_method?(k) }) # Used to ignore any unused parameters that don't exist on the model.
end
# To convert `bosses` from JSON into a hash for easy use.
def get_bosses
JSON.parse bosses.gsub( '=>', ':' )
end
end
Migration:
// xxxxxx_create_progression.rb
class CreateProgression < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.0]
def change
create_table :progressions do |t|
t.integer :character_id
end
create_table :dungeons do |t|
t.integer :character_id
t.integer :progression_id
t.string :name
t.text :bosses
end
add_index :progressions, :character_id
add_index :dungeons, :progression_id
end
end
Now, when a User is updated to fetch their progression, I can set their progression.
// users_controller.rb
def update_progression
progression = ... fetched from the response
#user.progression = Progression.initialize(progression)
end
After that's all saved to the user, you can now fetch the progression back by going:
<% user.progression.dungeons.each do |dungeon| %>
<%= dungeon.name %>
<% end %>
This solution seems like a decent mix, but I'm a bit worried about the parsing of the JSON. It could become too much, but I'll have to keep watching it. Any other ideas or improvements would be greatly appreicated.