what is difference between using concerns vs modules in rails? - ruby-on-rails

Just now I started to using Concerns in rails, but i have doubt why we go for concerns, because we can achieve same thing on module & mixing concept. So please any one tell about shat is the use of concerns instead of using module.

It's well described here: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/Concern.html
In short:
Concerns allow you to use #included and #class_methods instead of self.included hook with additional module ClassMethods creation;
Concerns give you a better dependency resolution for modules included in each other;

ActiveSupport::Concern adds some convenient features (i.e class_methods) to your module. You can use "pure" ruby modules without extending it. Essentially you create a module which you mix-in to a class. Doesn't matter if this module extends AS::Concern, the mechanism is the same.

when you write in concern that mean you are making one module. My opinion is concern and module be similar together. Concern can appear somewhere as model, controller and at here you can write module for yourself. And with general module is write in lib folder. Both can be used by way include or extend into a class.

Related

How to write a Devise extension (to use a custom datastore)

I'd like to write an extension for Devise that allows you to use parse_resource as the datastore (as opposed to ActiveRecord). parse_resource is a Ruby wrapper for Parse.com's REST api. It's interface is pretty much the same as ActiveRecord's and is ActiveModel complaint. Because of this, it seems possible that an extension for Devise may not require too much non-boilerplate.
However, I can't find any tutorials. All I have to rely on are the sources for other extensions. From the MongoMapper extension, I gather that there are two main parts:
The generators (not quite required)
Here you overwrite DeviseGenerator#(generate_model|inject_devise_content|replace_default_devise_orm) methods.
The "guts" (very much required)
I'm not quite as sure what's going on here. It seems that there's a lot of boilerplate, with a little bit of custom type-casting, and at the bottom there's a declaration that we'll be using this extension instead of the default ORM.
Is that all there is to it? What am I missing? Can someone explain what happens in "the guts" in a bit more detail?
Are there any simple lint tests to run to ensure full compatibility with Devise?
I think the best approach would be to write an orm_adapter adapter for parse resource. It is the real "guts" of devise's integration with various orms.
It is actually very straightforward and includes a test suite you can use. Considering parse_resource is activemodel compliant, the adapter should be as easy as cloning an existing adapter.
Next you will need to hook in the orm_adapter to devise, which is just a clone of one of these files.
For a good start you can check out the couchDB extension and the Riak extension as well. You can see that in the Hook module you override anything you want/must for making the Devise to work.
Can you see the class_eval declaration at the bottom? There you extend the class (in your case the ParseResource::Base) with the Devise::Models module, which holds all the necessary methods (including the famous devise method as you can see), and next with the Hooks module if you want to override anything (the MongoMapper extension doen't need to override anything, that's why is not using this method). Thus you must write:
module Devise
module Orm
module ParseResource
module Hooks
# here you define any overrides
end
end
end
end
ParseResource::Base.class_eval do
extend Devise::Models
extend Devise::Orm::ParseResource::Hooks
end
After that you must require 'devise/orm/parse_resource' (assuming you have named the file parse_resource.rb) in your #{Rails.root}/config/initializers/devise.rb initializer. Hope I helped a bit :)

A way to handle common behaviors

I am using Ruby on Rails 3.0.7 and I have multiple resources that almost have the same behavior. That is, those almost have same model, controller and view codes and same database table columns definition.
So I would like to find a way to DRY those resources. I already implemented modules and mixins for those in order to share part of the code (as validation methods, callbacks, view files but not controller files that, anyway, have very similar code).
Now, how can I do to handle this common behavior? Should I use something that Ruby on Rails developers named as acts_as_something? What do you advice about?
I think you already did that, just name a method in your modules act_as_your_module_name and make sure your module extends from your Base Class, e.g. ActiveRecord::Base.extend act_as_your_module_name
http://www.cowboycoded.com/tag/acts_as/

Ruby on Rails: where should I store modules?

I am new to Ruby on Rails and my questions are about the application design, based on Rails 3. There are many data on the internet on the creation of standard websites (such as blogs) on Rails, but my application requires more than just "post and read" and I am not sure how to implement that.
The idea:
The model "Route" includes a number of airlines modules: "Ryanair", "easyJet", etc.
The "Route.Update" method calls the "UpdateRoutes" on each airline module (for example, "Ryanair.UpdateRoutes", "easyJet.UpdateRoutes")
It should work the same way with more models (such as "Flight.find") and more airlines ("Delta.FindFlights")
The questions:
Where should I store all the modules? I don't see any app/modules folder in Rails.
If my modules require gems, should I include them in the modules or in the models (where they are actually used)?
I want to make my application scalable. For example, I want to add a new working airline (module) without changing any code in "Route", "Flight" or any other model. I imagine something like the method "IncludeAirlines" which would go through modules/airlines/name.rb, include every module and call the needed method of it (such as name.UpdateRoutes). Is there any better way to implement that in Ruby on Rails?
As you might know, modules are generally used either as namespaces or as mixins.
Where you place a module depends on how tightly coupled a module is with the app directory . A few patterns in storing modules :
The /lib directory, if the module does not particularly 'interact' or concern the app/ and you treat the module as an internal plug-in.
The app/models directory, would be an appropriate place if your module is central to your business logic. A popular use case here, is where you use a module as a mixin to DRY your models/controllers.
37 Signals introduced a pattern of treating them as 'concerns' and storing them in app/concerns.
If your module uses a gem, you may need to require the gem in the module (sometimes a require is not at all necessary).
Your 3rd question is not clear. Sorry about that. Not quite sure what you're trying to do.

How to break rails models into modules? [duplicate]

I have a model that requires loading external data from an auxiliary source. A number of web services exist that my model can fetch the data from (swappable), but I don't want to create code that will make it difficult to change services (costs significantly differ based on variable and fixed usage and it is likely changing will be required).
I would like to create a driver to perform the interaction (and then create further custom drivers if the service requires switching). Unfortunately, due to the tight coupling of the driver and model, it does not makes sense to extract the code into a plugin or gem. I have extracted all the code into a module (see example), and currently have the code declared above my model.
module Synchronize
def refresh
self.attributes = ...
self.save
end
end
class Data < ActiveRecord::Base
include Synchronize
end
Does Rails (3.0.0) have a convention for storing modules tightly coupled with models? Should I be using a plugin to do this? Is this associated with the 'app/helpers' directory? If not, where is the most appropriate place to store the code? Thanks!
You are correct that if the module is tightly coupled to that specific model then it's not a good candidate for a gem/plugin.
app/helpers/ is for view helper methods and shouldn't contain modules that are solely for mixing into models.
One place you could put the module is within lib/. This is for code that doesn't really fit anywhere within app/ and is often the initial home of loosely coupled code before it is moved to a plugin (but that isn't a hard and fast rule). However, since your module is tightly coupled to your model, lib/ may not be the best place for it.
I know that 37signals (and others) use the concept of 'concerns' as a way of keeping related model code organised in modules. This is implemented by creating app/concerns/ and putting the modules in there. That directory is then added to the app's load path in config/application.rb (config/environment.rb for Rails 2) with:
config.load_paths += %W(#{Rails.root}/app/concerns)
The module can then be mixed into the model as normal.
Here's the original blog post about this by Jamis Buck - http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/1/17/concerns-in-activerecord
Another variation of this which I personally prefer, although it doesn't involve modules, uses this plugin:
http://github.com/jakehow/concerned_with
Hope that helps.
This link has helped me out around this.
http://ander.heroku.com/2010/12/14/concerns-in-rails-3/
I have been sticking it in a model/extensions directory. The concerns directory makes sense but the word 'concerns' doesn't feel obvious to me. Maybe it will grow on me.
I also added the extensions path in the application.rb
config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/app/models/extensions)

Model Using Modules in Rails Application

I have a model that requires loading external data from an auxiliary source. A number of web services exist that my model can fetch the data from (swappable), but I don't want to create code that will make it difficult to change services (costs significantly differ based on variable and fixed usage and it is likely changing will be required).
I would like to create a driver to perform the interaction (and then create further custom drivers if the service requires switching). Unfortunately, due to the tight coupling of the driver and model, it does not makes sense to extract the code into a plugin or gem. I have extracted all the code into a module (see example), and currently have the code declared above my model.
module Synchronize
def refresh
self.attributes = ...
self.save
end
end
class Data < ActiveRecord::Base
include Synchronize
end
Does Rails (3.0.0) have a convention for storing modules tightly coupled with models? Should I be using a plugin to do this? Is this associated with the 'app/helpers' directory? If not, where is the most appropriate place to store the code? Thanks!
You are correct that if the module is tightly coupled to that specific model then it's not a good candidate for a gem/plugin.
app/helpers/ is for view helper methods and shouldn't contain modules that are solely for mixing into models.
One place you could put the module is within lib/. This is for code that doesn't really fit anywhere within app/ and is often the initial home of loosely coupled code before it is moved to a plugin (but that isn't a hard and fast rule). However, since your module is tightly coupled to your model, lib/ may not be the best place for it.
I know that 37signals (and others) use the concept of 'concerns' as a way of keeping related model code organised in modules. This is implemented by creating app/concerns/ and putting the modules in there. That directory is then added to the app's load path in config/application.rb (config/environment.rb for Rails 2) with:
config.load_paths += %W(#{Rails.root}/app/concerns)
The module can then be mixed into the model as normal.
Here's the original blog post about this by Jamis Buck - http://weblog.jamisbuck.org/2007/1/17/concerns-in-activerecord
Another variation of this which I personally prefer, although it doesn't involve modules, uses this plugin:
http://github.com/jakehow/concerned_with
Hope that helps.
This link has helped me out around this.
http://ander.heroku.com/2010/12/14/concerns-in-rails-3/
I have been sticking it in a model/extensions directory. The concerns directory makes sense but the word 'concerns' doesn't feel obvious to me. Maybe it will grow on me.
I also added the extensions path in the application.rb
config.autoload_paths += %W(#{config.root}/app/models/extensions)

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