How to UNION tables and make results accessible in a Ruby view - ruby-on-rails

I'm quite new to RoR and creating a student project for a course I'm taking. I'm wanting to construct a type of query we didn't cover in the course and which I know I could do in a snap in .NET and SQL. I'm having a heck of a time though getting it implemented the Ruby way.
What I'd like to do: Display a list on a user's page of all "posts" by that user's friends.
"Posts" are found in both a questions table and in a blurbs table that users contribute to. I'd like to UNION these two into a single recordset to sort by updated_at DESC.
The table column names are not the same however, and this is my sticking point since other successful answers I've seen have hinged on column names being the same between the two.
In SQL I'd write something like (emphasis on like):
SELECT b.Blurb AS 'UserPost', b.updated_at, u.username as 'Author'
FROM Blurbs b
INNER JOIN Users u ON b.User_ID = u.ID
WHERE u.ID IN
(SELECT f.friend_id FROM Friendships f WHERE f.User_ID = [current user])
ORDER BY b.updated_at DESC
UNION
SELECT q.Question, q.updated_at, u.username
FROM Questions q
INNER JOIN Users u ON q.User_ID = u.ID
WHERE u.ID IN
(SELECT f.friend_id FROM Friendships f WHERE f.User_ID = [current user])
ORDER BY b.updated_at DESC
The User model's (applicable) relationships are:
has_many :friendships
has_many :friends, through: :friendships
has_many :questions
has_many :blurbs
And the Question and Blurb models both have belongs_to :user
In the view I'd like to display the contents of the 'UserPost' column and the 'Author'. I'm sure this is possible, I'm just too new still to ActiveRecord and how statements are formed. Happy to have some input or review any relevant links that speak to this specifically!
Final Solution
Hopefully this will assist others in the future with Ruby UNION questions. Thanks to #Plamena's input the final implementation ended up as:
def friend_posts
sql = "...the UNION statement seen above..."
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all(ActiveRecord::Base.send("sanitize_sql_array",[sql, self.id, self.id] ) )
end

Currently Active Record lacks union support. You can use SQL:
sql = <<-SQL
# your sql query goes here
SELECT b.created_at ...
UNION(
SELECT q.created_at
....
)
SQL
posts = ActiveRecord::Base.connection.select_all(sql)
Then you can iterate the result:
posts.each do |post|
# post is a hash
p post['created_at']
end

Your best way to do this is to just use the power of Rails
If you want all of something belonging to a user's friend:
current_user.friends.find(id_of_friend).first.questions
This would get all of the questions from a certain friend.
Now, it seems that you have writings in multiple places (this is hard to visualise without your providing a model of how writings is connected to everywhere else). Can you provide this?

#blurbs = Blurb.includes(:user)
#blurbs.each do |blurb|
p blurb.blurb, blurb.user.username
end

Related

Select records all of whose records exist in another join table

In the following book club example with associations:
class User
has_and_belongs_to_many :clubs
has_and_belongs_to_many :books
end
class Club
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
has_and_belongs_to_many :books
end
class Book
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
has_and_belongs_to_many :clubs
end
given a specific club record:
club = Club.find(params[:id])
how can I find all the users in the club who have all books in array of books?
club.users.where_has_all_books(books)
In PostgreSQL it can be done with a single query. (Maybe in MySQL too, I'm just not sure.)
So, some basic assumptions first. 3 tables: clubs, users and books, every table has id as a primary key. 3 join tables, books_clubs, books_users, clubs_users, each table contains pairs of ids (for books_clubs it will be [book_id, club_id]), and those pairs are unique within that table. Quite reasonable conditions IMO.
Building a query:
First, let's get ids of books from given club:
SELECT book_id
FROM books_clubs
WHERE club_id = 1
ORDER BY book_id
Then get users from given club, and group them by user.id:
SELECT CU.user_id
FROM clubs_users CU
JOIN users U ON U.id = CU.user_id
JOIN books_users BU ON BU.user_id = CU.user_id
WHERE CU.club_id = 1
GROUP BY CU.user_id
Join these two queries by adding having to 2nd query:
HAVING array_agg(BU.book_id ORDER BY BU.book_id) #> ARRAY(##1##)
where ##1## is the 1st query.
What's going on here: Function array_agg from the left part creates a sorted list (of array type) of book_ids. These are books of user. ARRAY(##1##) from the right part returns the sorted list of books of the club. And operator #> checks if 1st array contains all elements of the 2nd (ie if user has all books of the club).
Since 1st query needs to be performed only once, it can be moved to WITH clause.
Your complete query:
WITH club_book_ids AS (
SELECT book_id
FROM books_clubs
WHERE club_id = :club_id
ORDER BY book_id
)
SELECT CU.user_id
FROM clubs_users CU
JOIN users U ON U.id = CU.user_id
JOIN books_users BU ON BU.user_id = CU.user_id
WHERE CU.club_id = :club_id
GROUP BY CU.user_id
HAVING array_agg(BU.book_id ORDER BY BU.book_id) #> ARRAY(SELECT * FROM club_book_ids);
It can be verified in this sandbox: https://www.db-fiddle.com/f/cdPtRfT2uSGp4DSDywST92/5
Wrap it to find_by_sql and that's it.
Some notes:
ordering by book_id is not necessary; #> operator works with unordered arrays too. I just have a suspicion that comparison of ordered array is faster.
JOIN users U ON U.id = CU.user_id in 2nd query is only necessary for fetching user properties; in case of fetching user ids only it can be removed
It appears to work by grouping and counting.
club.users.joins(:books).where(books: { id: club.books.pluck(:id) }).group('users.id').having('count(*) = ?', club.books.count)
If anyone knows how to run the query without intermediate queries that would be great and I will accept the answer.
This looks like a situation where you'd make two queries, one to get all the ids you need, the other select perform a WHERE IN.

Exclude object if one of the has_many related entities has the attribute with value x

I came across about the problem excluding data, if the attribute x of one of the associated data has the value 'a'.
Example:
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :items
end
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :order
validate_presence_of :status
end
The query should return all Orders that don't have an Item with status = 'paid' (status != 'paid').
Because of the 1:n association an Order can have many Items. And one of the Itmes can have the status = 'paid'. These Orders must be excluded from the result of my query even if the order has other items with status different from 'paid'.
How would I solve this problem:
paid_items = Items.where(status: 'paid').pluck(:order_id)
orders_wo_paid = Order.where('id NOT IN (?)', paid_items)
Is there an ActiveRecord solution, that solves this problem in one query.
Or are there other ways to solve this question?
I 'm not looking for ruby solution such as:
Order.select do |order|
!order.items.pluck(:status).include?('paid')
end
thx for ideas and inspirations.
You can do:
Order.where('orders.id NOT IN (?)', Item.where(status: 'paid').select(:order_id))
If you're using Rails 4.x then:
Order.where.not(id: Item.where(status: 'paid').select(:order_id))
The query you are interested in is the following, but creating with activerecord will be hard/no very readable:
SELECT
orders.*
FROM
orders
LEFT JOIN
order_items ON orders.id = order_items.order_id
GROUP BY
order_items.order_id
HAVING
COUNT(DISTINCT order_items.id) = COUNT(DISTINCT order_items.status <> 'paid')
Sorry for the sql indentation, I have no idea which are the conventions for it.
A way (not the best one at all) to it with rails (unfortunately writing sql for the most important parts) would be the following:
Order.group(:order_id).joins("LEFT JOIN order_items ON orders.id = order_items.order_id")
.having("COUNT(DISTINCT order_items.id) = COUNT(DISTINCT order_items.status <> 'paid')")
Of course you can play with AREL to get rid of the hard coded sql, but in my opinion it will not be easier to read.
You can have an example of creating lefts joins in this gist: https://gist.github.com/mildmojo/3724189

How to write complex query in Ruby

Need advice, how to write complex query in Ruby.
Query in PHP project:
$get_trustee = db_query("SELECT t.trustee_name,t.secret_key,t.trustee_status,t.created,t.user_id,ui.image from trustees t
left join users u on u.id = t.trustees_id
left join user_info ui on ui.user_id = t.trustees_id
WHERE t.user_id='$user_id' AND trustee_status ='pending'
group by secret_key
ORDER BY t.created DESC")
My guess in Ruby:
get_trustee = Trustee.find_by_sql('SELECT t.trustee_name, t.secret_key, t.trustee_status, t.created, t.user_id, ui.image FROM trustees t
LEFT JOIN users u ON u.id = t.trustees_id
LEFT JOIN user_info ui ON ui.user_id = t.trustees_id
WHERE t.user_id = ? AND
t.trustee_status = ?
GROUP BY secret_key
ORDER BY t.created DESC',
[user_id, 'pending'])
Option 1 (Okay)
Do you mean Ruby with ActiveRecord? Are you using ActiveRecord and/or Rails? #find_by_sql is a method that exists within ActiveRecord. Also it seems like the user table isn't really needed in this query, but maybe you left something out? Either way, I'll included it in my examples. This query would work if you haven't set up your relationships right:
users_trustees = Trustee.
select('trustees.*, ui.image').
joins('LEFT OUTER JOIN users u ON u.id = trustees.trustees_id').
joins('LEFT OUTER JOIN user_info ui ON ui.user_id = t.trustees_id').
where(user_id: user_id, trustee_status: 'pending').
order('t.created DESC')
Also, be aware of a few things with this solution:
I have not found a super elegant way to get the columns from the join tables out of the ActiveRecord objects that get returned. You can access them by users_trustees.each { |u| u['image'] }
This query isn't really THAT complex and ActiveRecord relationships make it much easier to understand and maintain.
I'm assuming you're using a legacy database and that's why your columns are named this way. If I'm wrong and you created these tables for this app, then your life would be much easier (and conventional) with your primary keys being called id and your timestamps being called created_at and updated_at.
Option 2 (Better)
If you set up your ActiveRecord relationships and classes properly, then this query is much easier:
class Trustee < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_key = 'trustees_id' # wouldn't be needed if the column was id
has_one :user
has_one :user_info
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :trustee, foreign_key: 'trustees_id' # relationship can also go the other way
end
class UserInfo < ActiveRecord::Base
self.table_name = 'user_info'
belongs_to :trustee
end
Your "query" can now be ActiveRecord goodness if performance isn't paramount. The Ruby convention is readability first, reorganizing code later if stuff starts to scale.
Let's say you want to get a trustee's image:
trustee = Trustee.where(trustees_id: 5).first
if trustee
image = trustee.user_info.image
..
end
Or if you want to get all trustee's images:
Trustee.all.collect { |t| t.user_info.try(:image) } # using a #try in case user_info is nil
Option 3 (Best)
It seems like trustee is just a special-case user of some sort. You can use STI if you don't mind restructuring you tables to simplify even further.
This is probably outside of the scope of this question so I'll just link you to the docs on this: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html see "Single Table Inheritance". Also see the article that they link to from Martin Fowler (http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/singleTableInheritance.html)
Resources
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_querying.html
Yes, find_by_sql will work, you can try this also:
Trustee.connection.execute('...')
or for generic queries:
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute('...')

How to write query in active record to select from two or more tables in rails 3

I don't want to use join
I want to manually compare any field with other table field
for example
SELECT u.user_id, t.task_id
FROM tasks t, users u
WHERE u.user_id = t.user_id
how can i write this query in Rails ??
Assuming you have associations in your models, you can simply do as follow
User.joins(:tasks).select('users.user_id, tasks.task_id')
you can also do as follow
User.includes(:tasks).where("user.id =tasks.user_id")
includes will do eager loading check the example below or read eager loading at here
users = User.limit(10)
users.each do |user|
puts user.address.postcode
end
This will run 11 queries, it is called N+1 query problem(first you query to get all the rows then you query on each row again to do something). with includes Active Record ensures that all of the specified associations are loaded using the minimum possible number of queries.
Now when you do;
users = User.includes(:address).limit(10)
user.each do |user|
puts user.address.postcode
end
It will generate just 2 queries as follow
SELECT * FROM users LIMIT 10
SELECT addresses.* FROM addresses
WHERE (addresses.user_id IN (1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10))
Plus if you don't have associations then read below;
you should be have to look at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html
Assuming your are trying to do inner join, by default in rails when we associate two models and then query on them then we are doing inner join on those tables.
You have to create associations between the models example is given below
class User
has_many :reservations
...# your code
end
And in reservations
class Reservations
belongs_to :user
... #your code
end
Now when you do
User.joins(:reservations)
the generated query would look like as follow
"SELECT `users`.* FROM `users` INNER JOIN `reservations` ON `reservations`.`user_id` = `users`.`id`"
you can check the query by doing User.joins(:reservations).to_sql in terminal
Hopefully it would answer your question
User.find_by_sql("YOUR SQL QUERY HERE")
You can use as follows..
User.includes(:tasks).where("user.id =tasks.user_id").order(:user.id)

How to filter association_ids for an ActiveRecord model?

In a domain like this:
class User
has_many :posts
has_many :topics, :through => :posts
end
class Post
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :topic
end
class Topic
has_many :posts
end
I can read all the Topic ids through user.topic_ids but I can't see a way to apply filtering conditions to this method, since it returns an Array instead of a ActiveRecord::Relation.
The problem is, given a User and an existing set of Topics, marking the ones for which there is a post by the user. I am currently doing something like this:
def mark_topics_with_post(user, topics)
# only returns the ids of the topics for which this user has a post
topic_ids = user.topic_ids
topics.each {|t| t[:has_post]=topic_ids.include(t.id)}
end
But this loads all the topic ids regardless of the input set. Ideally, I'd like to do something like
def mark_topics_with_post(user, topics)
# only returns the topics where user has a post within the subset of interest
topic_ids = user.topic_ids.where(:id=>topics.map(&:id))
topics.each {|t| t[:has_post]=topic_ids.include(t.id)}
end
But the only thing I can do concretely is
def mark_topics_with_post(user, topics)
# needlessly create Post objects only to unwrap them later
topic_ids = user.posts.where(:topic_id=>topics.map(&:id)).select(:topic_id).map(&:topic_id)
topics.each {|t| t[:has_post]=topic_ids.include(t.id)}
end
Is there a better way?
Is it possible to have something like select_values on a association or scope?
FWIW, I'm on rails 3.0.x, but I'd be curious about 3.1 too.
Why am I doing this?
Basically, I have a result page for a semi-complex search (which happens based on the Topic data only), and I want to mark the results (Topics) as stuff on which the user has interacted (wrote a Post).
So yeah, there is another option which would be doing a join [Topic,Post] so that the results come out as marked or not from the search, but this would destroy my ability to cache the Topic query (the query, even without the join, is more expensive than fetching only the ids for the user)
Notice the approaches outlined above do work, they just feel suboptimal.
I think that your second solution is almost the optimal one (from the point of view of the queries involved), at least with respect to the one you'd like to use.
user.topic_ids generates the query:
SELECT `topics`.id FROM `topics`
INNER JOIN `posts` ON `topics`.`id` = `posts`.`topic_id`
WHERE `posts`.`user_id` = 1
if user.topic_ids.where(:id=>topics.map(&:id)) was possible it would have generated this:
SELECT topics.id FROM `topics`
INNER JOIN `posts` ON `topics`.`id` = `posts`.`topic_id`
WHERE `posts`.`user_id` = 1 AND `topics`.`id` IN (...)
this is exactly the same query that is generated doing: user.topics.select("topics.id").where(:id=>topics.map(&:id))
while user.posts.select(:topic_id).where(:topic_id=>topics.map(&:id)) generates the following query:
SELECT topic_id FROM `posts`
WHERE `posts`.`user_id` = 1 AND `posts`.`topic_id` IN (...)
which one of the two is more efficient depends on the data in the actual tables and indices defined (and which db is used).
If the topic ids list for the user is long and has topics repeated many times, it may make sense to group by topic id at the query level:
user.posts.select(:topic_id).group(:topic_id).where(:topic_id=>topics.map(&:id))
Suppose your Topic model has a column named id you can do something like this
Topic.select(:id).join(:posts).where("posts.user_id = ?", user_id)
This will run only one query against your database and will give you all the topics ids that have posts for a given user_id

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