mongodb _id reuse after deletion - ruby-on-rails

Suppose I deleted a document or subdocument in mongodb. Can I create document / subdocument with the same _id as the deleted one? In this case, we assume, we cannot do update operation, just delete and create.
For example using Mongoid (Rails gem for mongodb) :
We have Person Model
class Person
include Mongoid::Document
field :a, :type => String
embeds_many :personattributes
end
class Personattribute
include Mongoid::Document
field :myattribute, :type => String
embedded_in :person
end
And in my Rails controller
class MyController < ApplicationController
...
#the_attributes=#person.personattributes.entries
...
#controller will render page, an instance variable #the_attributes will be available as JSON in clientside
end
Then user does some client side data modifications. They can add 1 or more personattributes to that person data. They can do some changes on its attributes. They can delete some also.
All in client side.
Then by AJAX call, user sends the modified data back in JSON format like
[{_id:"5253fd494db79bb271000009",myattribute:"test"},{...},...]
The retriever in controller retrieves the data
Then totally replace the attribute list inside person with the new one. Total deletion and insertion, no update.
class MyController < ApplicationController
...
#person.personattributes.delete_all #delete all attributes a #person has
attributes=params[:attributes]
attributes.map {|attr|
Personattribute.new(:_id => Moped::BSON::ObjectId.from_string(attr["_id"].to_s), :myattribute => attr["myattribute"])
}
#person.personattributes=attributes
#person.save
...
end
Can I do this? It simply means, delete all, and insert all and reuse the _ids.
If not, I will be happy to get some advice on a better approach on this.
I can't do upsert since the deleted documents will need another loop to handle.
Thank you

Yes, you can do it but I would recommend you not to do that. It seems to have lots of security issues if someone modifies the array manually
I could send:
[{_id:"5253fd494db79bb271000009",myattribute:"test_modified"},{...},...]
or even:
[{_id:"my_new_id_1",myattribute:"test_modified"},{...},...]
which would raise an exception
Moped::BSON::ObjectId.from_string "my_new_id_1" #=> raises an Exception
Try something like:
attributes=params[:attributes]
attributes.each do |attr|
#person.personattributes.find(attr["_id"]).myattribute = attr["myattribute"]
#or #person.personattributes.find(attr["_id"]).try(:myattribute=,attr["myattribute"])
end
Probably in a future you want to change the action and send just the modified personattributes in the array instead of all the personattributes. What would you do then if you delete_all and rebuild personattributes with just the sent personattributes?
EDIT
This handles personattributes updates. Create or delete personattributes should go in different actions:
Create action
#person.personattributes.push Personattribute.new(my_attribute: params[:my_attribute])
Delete action
#person.personattributes.delete(params[:personattribute_id])

Yes, you can keep using the same _id. They just need to be unique within a collection -- and that's only true for the document's _id.
Any ObjectId you might use elsewhere in an another field in a document (or in a subdocument) doesn't need to be unique, unless you've created an index where it must be unique.

Related

Rails preview update associations without saving to database

I want to preview what the model will look like when saved without currently saving to the database.
I am using #event.attributes = because that assigns but does not save attributes for #event to the database.
However, when I also try to assign the audiences association, Rails inserts new records into the audiences_events join table. Not cool. Is there a way to preview what these new associations will look like without inserting into the join table?
Model
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :audiences # And vice versa for the Audience model.
end
Controller
class EventsController < ApplicationController
def preview
#event = Event.find(params[:id])
#event.attributes = event_params
end
private
def event_params
params[:event].permit(:name, :start_time, :audiences => [:id, :name]
end
end
Possible Solutions?
Possible solutions that I thought of, but don't know how to do:
Using some sort of method that assigns associations, but does not persist them.
disabling all database writes for this one action (I dont know how to do that).
Rolling back all database changes at the end of this action
Any help with these would be great!
UPDATE:
After the reading the great answers below, I ended up writing this service class that assigns the non-nested attributes to the Event model, then calls collection.build on each of the nested params. I made a little gist. Happy to receive comments/suggestions.
https://gist.github.com/jameskerr/69cedb2f30c95342f64a
In these docs you have:
When are Objects Saved?
When you assign an object to a has_and_belongs_to_many association, that object is automatically saved (in order to update the join table). If you assign multiple objects in one statement, then they are all saved.
If you want to assign an object to a has_and_belongs_to_many association without saving the object, use the collection.build method.
Here is a good answer for Rails 3 that goes over some of the same issues
Rails 3 has_and_belongs_to_many association: how to assign related objects without saving them to the database
Transactions
Creating transactions is pretty straight forward:
Event.transaction do
#event.audiences.create!
#event.audiences.first.destroy!
end
Or
#event.transaction do
#event.audiences.create!
#event.audiences.first.destroy!
end
Notice the use of the "bang" methods create! and destroy!, unlike create which returns false create! will raise an exception if it fails and cause the transaction to rollback.
You can also manually trigger a rollback anywhere in the a transaction by raising ActiveRecord::Rollback.
Build
build instantiates a new related object without saving.
event = Event.new(name: 'Party').audiences.build(name: 'Party People')
event.save # saves both event and audiences
I know that this is a pretty old question, but I found a solution that works perfectly for me and hope it could save time to someone else:
class A
has_many :bs, class_name 'B'
end
class B
belongs_to :a, class_name: 'A'
end
a.bs.target.clear
new_bs.each {|new_b| a.bs.build new_b.attributes.except('created_at', 'updated_at', 'id') }
you will avoid autosave that Rails does when you do a.bs = new_bs

Updating association without saving it

I have a model:
class A < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :B
end
And I want to reset or update A's B association, but only save it later:
a = A.find(...)
# a.bs == [B<...>, B<...>]
a.bs = []
#or
a.bs = [B.new, B.new]
# do some validation stuff on `a` and `a.bs`
So there might be some case where I will call a.save later or maybe not. In the case I don't call a.save I would like that a.bs stay to its original value, but as soon as I call a.bs = [], the old associations is destroyed and now A.find(...).bs == []. Is there any simple way to set a record association without persisting it in the database right away? I looked at Rails source and didn't find anything that could help me there.
Thanks!
Edit:
I should add that this is for an existing application and there are some architecture constraint that doesn't allow us to use the the regular ActiveRecord updating and validation tools. The way it works we have a set of Updater class that take params and assign the checkout object the value from params. There are then a set of Validater class that validate the checkout object for each given params. Fianlly, if everything is good, we save the model.
In this case, I'm looking to update the association in an Updater, validate them in the Validator and finally, persist it if everything check out.
In summary, this would look like:
def update
apply_updaters(object, params)
# do some stuff with the updated object
if(validate(object))
object.save(validate: false)
end
Since there are a lot of stuff going on between appy_updaters and object.save, Transaction are not really an option. This is why I'm really looking to update the association without persisting right away, just like we would do with any other attribute.
So far, the closest solution I've got to is rewriting the association cache (target). This look something like:
# In the updater
A.bs.target.clear
params[:bs].each{|b| A.bs.build(b)}
# A.bs now contains the parameters object without doing any update in the database
When come the time to save, we need to persist cache:
new_object = A.bs.target
A.bs(true).replace(new_object)
This work, but this feel kind of hack-ish and can easily break or have some undesired side-effect. An alternative I'm thinking about is to add a method A#new_bs= that cache the assigned object and A#bs that return the cached object if available.
Good question.
I can advice to use attributes assignment instead of collection manipulation. All validations will be performed as regular - after save or another 'persistent' method. You can write your own method (in model or in separated validator) which will validate collection.
You can delete and add elements to collection through attributes - deletion is performed by additional attribute _destroy which may be 'true' or 'false' (http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/NestedAttributes/ClassMethods.html), addition - through setting up parent model to accept attributes.
As example set up model A:
class A < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :b
accepts_nested_attributes_for :b, :allow_destroy => true
validates_associated :b # to validate each element
validate :b_is_correct # to validate whole collection
def b_is_correct
self.bs.each { |b| ... } # validate collection
end
end
In controller use plain attributes for model updating (e.g update!(a_aparams)). These methods will behave like flat attribute updating. And don't forget to permit attributes for nested collection.
class AController < ApplicationController
def update
#a = A.find(...)
#a.update(a_attributes) # triggers validation, if error occurs - no changes will be persisted and a.errors will be populated
end
def a_attributes
params.require(:a).permit([:attr_of_a, :b_attributes => [:attr_of_b, :_destroy]])
end
end
On form we used gem nested_form (https://github.com/ryanb/nested_form), I recommend it. But on server side this approach uses attribute _destroy as mentioned before.
I finally found out about the mark_for_destruction method. My final solution therefor look like:
a.bs.each(&:mark_for_destruction)
params[:bs].each{|b| a.bs.build(b)}
And then I can filter out the marked_for_destruction? entry in the following processing and validation.
Thanks #AlkH that made me look into how accepts_nested_attributes_for was working and handling delayed destruction of association.

how to run a one-time database change on a single user

I have Customer and each customer has_many Properties. Customers belong to a Company.
I'm trying to add a certain Property to each one of a single Company's Customers. I only want this change to happen once.
I'm thinking about using a migration but it doesn't seem right to create a migration for a change that I only ever want to happen once, and only on one of my users.
Is there a right way to do this?
You can just use rails console.
In rails c:
Company.where(conditions).last.customers.each do |customer|
customer.properties << Property.where(condition)
customer.save!
end
Validation
Depending on how you're changing the Customer model, I'd include a simple vaidation on the before_update callback to see if the attribute is populated or not:
#app/models/Customer.rb
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
before_update :is_valid?
private
def is_valid?
return if self.attribute.present?
end
end
This will basically check if the model has the attribute populated. If it does, it means you'll then be able to update it, else it will break
--
Strong_Params
An alternative will be to set the strong_params so that the attribute you want to remain constant will not be changed when you update / create the element:
#app/controllers/application_controller.rb
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
...
private
def strong_params
params.require(:model).permit(:only, :attributes, :to, :update)
end
end
It would be much more helpful if you explained the context as to why you need this type of functionality - that will give people the ability to create a real solution, instead of proposing ideas

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.

Suggestion needed for keeping hash value in the table in rails

As an extension of the question
How to retrieve the hash values in the views in rails
I have some doubts of keeping hash values in the table..
I have a user detail table where i am maintaining the additional details of the user in a column named additional_info in a hash format .. Will it be good in keeping like so...
As if the user scenario changes if the user wants to find all the users under a particular project where i kept the project to which the user belongs in the hash format..
Give some suggestions..
Simple solution is to serialiaze it:
class FooBar < ActiveRecord::Base
# ...
serialize :additional_info
#...
end
This internally uses the YAML serializer. You can assign any object that can be serialized using YAML.
foo = FooBar.first
foo.additional_info = {:foo => 'Lorem', :bar => 'ipsum'}
foo.save
foo.additional_info[:foo] # Gives 'Lorem'

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