I'm writing an application that allows users to send one another messages about an 'offer'.
I thought I'd save myself some work and use the Mailboxer gem.
I'm following a test driven development approach with RSpec. I'm writing a test that should ensure that only one Conversation is allowed per offer. An offer belongs_to two different users (the user that made the offer, and the user that received the offer).
Here is my failing test:
describe "after a message is sent to the same user twice" do
before do
2.times { sending_user.message_user_regarding_offer! offer, receiving_user, random_string }
end
specify { sending_user.mailbox.conversations.count.should == 1 }
end
So before the test runs a user sending_user sends a message to the receiving_user twice. The message_user_regarding_offer! looks like this:
def message_user_regarding_offer! offer, receiver, body
conversation = offer.conversation
if conversation.nil?
self.send_message(receiver, body, offer.conversation_subject)
else
self.reply_to_conversation(conversation, body)
# I put a binding.pry here to examine in console
end
offer.create_activity key: PublicActivityKeys.message_received, owner: self, recipient: receiver
end
On the first iteration in the test (when the first message is sent) the conversation variable is nil therefore a message is sent and a conversation is created between the two users.
On the second iteration the conversation created in the first iteration is returned and the user replies to that conversation, but a new conversation isn't created.
This all works, but the test fails and I cannot understand why!
When I place a pry binding in the code in the location specified above I can examine what is going on... now riddle me this:
self.mailbox.conversations[0] returns a Conversation instance
self.mailbox.conversations[1] returns nil
self.mailbox.conversations clearly shows a collection containing ONE object.
self.mailbox.conversations.count returns 2?!
What is going on there? the count method is incorrect and my test is failing...
What am I missing? Or is this a bug?!
EDIT
offer.conversation looks like this:
def conversation
Conversation.where({subject: conversation_subject}).last
end
and offer.conversation_subject:
def conversation_subject
"offer-#{self.id}"
end
EDIT 2 - Showing the first and second iteration in pry
Also...
Conversation.all.count returns 1!
and:
Conversation.all == self.mailbox.conversations returns true
and
Conversation.all.count == self.mailbox.conversations.count returns false
How can that be if the arrays are equal? I don't know what's going on here, blown hours on this now. Think it's a bug?!
EDIT 3
From the source of the Mailboxer gem...
def conversations(options = {})
conv = Conversation.participant(#messageable)
if options[:mailbox_type].present?
case options[:mailbox_type]
when 'inbox'
conv = Conversation.inbox(#messageable)
when 'sentbox'
conv = Conversation.sentbox(#messageable)
when 'trash'
conv = Conversation.trash(#messageable)
when 'not_trash'
conv = Conversation.not_trash(#messageable)
end
end
if (options.has_key?(:read) && options[:read]==false) || (options.has_key?(:unread) && options[:unread]==true)
conv = conv.unread(#messageable)
end
conv
end
The reply_to_convesation code is available here -> http://rubydoc.info/gems/mailboxer/frames.
Just can't see what I'm doing wrong! Might rework my tests to get around this. Or ditch the gem and write my own.
see this Rails 3: Difference between Relation.count and Relation.all.count
In short Rails ignores the select columns (if more than one) when you apply count to the query. This is because
SQL's COUNT allows only one or less columns as parameters.
From Mailbox code
scope :participant, lambda {|participant|
select('DISTINCT conversations.*').
where('notifications.type'=> Message.name).
order("conversations.updated_at DESC").
joins(:receipts).merge(Receipt.recipient(participant))
}
self.mailbox.conversations.count ignores the select('DISTINCT conversations.*') and counts the join table with receipts, essentially counting number of receipts with duplicate conversations in it.
On the other hand, self.mailbox.conversations.all.count first gets the records applying the select, which gets unique conversations and then counts it.
self.mailbox.conversations.all == self.mailbox.conversations since both of them query the db with the select.
To solve your problem you can use sending_user.mailbox.conversations.all.count or sending_user.mailbox.conversations.group('conversations.id').length
I have tended to use the size method in my code. As per the ActiveRecord code, size will use a cached count if available and also returns the correct number when models have been created through relations and have not yet been saved.
# File activerecord/lib/active_record/relation.rb, line 228
def size
loaded? ? #records.length : count
end
There is a blog on this here.
In Ruby, #length and #size are synonyms and both do the same thing: they tell you how many elements are in an array or hash. Technically #length is the method and #size is an alias to it.
In ActiveRecord, there are several ways to find out how many records are in an association, and there are some subtle differences in how they work.
post.comments.count - Determine the number of elements with an SQL COUNT query. You can also specify conditions to count only a subset of the associated elements (e.g. :conditions => {:author_name => "josh"}). If you set up a counter cache on the association, #count will return that cached value instead of executing a new query.
post.comments.length - This always loads the contents of the association into memory, then returns the number of elements loaded. Note that this won't force an update if the association had been previously loaded and then new comments were created through another way (e.g. Comment.create(...) instead of post.comments.create(...)).
post.comments.size - This works as a combination of the two previous options. If the collection has already been loaded, it will return its length just like calling #length. If it hasn't been loaded yet, it's like calling #count.
It is also worth mentioning to be careful if you are not creating models through associations, as the related model will not necessarily have those instances in its association proxy/collection.
# do this
mailbox.conversations.build(attrs)
# or this
mailbox.conversations << Conversation.new(attrs)
# or this
mailbox.conversations.create(attrs)
# or this
mailbox.conversations.create!(attrs)
# NOT this
Conversation.new(mailbox_id: some_id, ....)
I don't know if this explains what's going on, but the ActiveRecord count method queries the database for the number of records stored. The length of the Relation could be different, as discussed in http://archive.railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=6255, although in that example, the number of records in the database was less than the number of items in the Rails data structure.
Try
self.mailbox.conversations.reload; self.mailbox.conversations.count
or perhaps
self.mailbox.reload; self.mailbox.conversations.count
or, if neither of those work, just try reloading as many of the objects as possible to see if you can get it to work (self, mailbox, conversations, etc.).
My guess is that something is messed up between memory and the DB. This is definitely a really weird error though, might wanna put in an issue on Rails to see why this would be the case.
The result of mailbox.conversations is cached after the first call. To reload it write mailbox.conversations(true)
Related
For context, I have a controller method called delete_cars. Inside of the method, I call destroy_all on an ActiveRecord::Collection of Cars. Below the destroy_all, I call another method, get_car_nums_not_deleted_from_portal, which looks like the following:
def get_car_nums_not_deleted_from_portal(cars_to_be_deleted)
reloaded_cars = cars_to_be_deleted.reload
car_nums = reloaded_cars.car_numbers
if reloaded_cars.any?
puts "Something went wrong. The following cars were not deleted from the portal: #{car_nums.join(', ')}"
end
car_nums
end
Here, I check to see if any cars were not deleted during the destroy_all transaction. If there are any, I just add a puts message. I also return the ActiveRecord::Collection whether there are any records or not, so the code to follow can handle it.
The goal with one of my feature tests is to mimic a user trying to delete three selected cars, but one fails to be deleted. When this scenario occurs, I display a specific notice on the page stating:
'Some selected cars have been successfully deleted from the portal, however, some have not. The '\
"following cars have not been deleted from the portal:\n\n#{some_car_numbers_go_here}"
How can I force just one record to fail when my code executes the destroy_all, WITHOUT adding extra code to my Car model (in the form of a before_destroy or something similar)? I've tried using a spy, but the issue is, when it's created, it's not a real record in the DB, so my query:
cars_to_be_deleted = Car.where(id: params[:car_ids].split(',').collect { |id| id.to_i })
doesn't include it.
For even more context, here's the test code:
context 'when at least one car is not deleted, but the rest are' do
it "should display a message stating 'Some selected cars have been successfully...' and list out the cars that were not deleted" do
expect(Car.count).to eq(100)
visit bulk_edit_cars_path
select(#location.name.upcase, from: 'Location')
select(#track.name.upcase, from: 'Track')
click_button("Search".upcase)
find_field("cars_to_edit[#{Car.first.id}]").click
find_field("cars_to_edit[#{Car.second.id}]").click
find_field("cars_to_edit[#{Car.third.id}]").click
click_button('Delete cars')
cars_to_be_deleted = Car.where(id: Car.first(3).map(&:id)).ids
click_button('Yes')
expect(page).to have_text(
'Some selected cars have been successfully deleted from the portal, however, some have not. The '\
"following cars have not been deleted from the portal:\n\n#{#first_three_cars_car_numbers[0]}".upcase
)
expect(Car.count).to eq(98)
expect(Car.where(id: cars_to_be_deleted).length).to eq(1)
end
end
Any help with this would be greatly appreciated! It's becoming quite frustrating lol.
One way to "mock" not deleting a record for a test could be to use the block version of .to receive to return a falsy value.
The argument for the block is the instance of the record that would be :destroyed.
Since we have this instance, we can check for an arbitrary record to be "not destroyed" and have the block return nil, which would indicate a "failure" from the :destroy method.
In this example, we check for the record of the first Car record in the database and return nil if it is.
If it is not the first record, we use the :delete method, as to not cause an infinite loop in the test (the test would keep calling the mock :destroy).
allow_any_instance_of(Car).to receive(:destroy) { |car|
# use car.delete to prevent infinite loop with the mocked :destroy method
if car.id != Car.first.id
car.delete
end
# this will return `nil`, which means failure from the :destroy method
}
You could create a method that accepts a list of records and decide which one you want to :destroy for more accurate testing!
I am sure there are other ways to work around this, but this is the best we have found so far :)
If there is a specific reason why the deletion might fail you can simulate that case.
Say you have a RaceResult record that must always refer to a valid Car and you have a DB constraint enforcing this (in Postgres: ON DELETE RESTRICT). You could write a test that creates the RaceResult records for some of your Car records:
it 'Cars prevented from deletion are reported` do
...
do_not_delete_cars = Car.where(id: Car.first(3).map(&:id)).ids
do_not_delete_cars.each { |car| RaceResult.create(car: car, ...) }
click_button('Yes')
expect(page).to have_text(...
end
Another option would be to use some knowledge of how your controller interacts with the model:
allow(Car).to receive(:destroy_list_of_cars).with(1,2,3).and_return(false) # or whatever your method would return
This would not actually run the destroy_list_of_cars method, so all the records would still be there in the DB. Then you can expect error messages for each of your selected records.
Or since destroy_all calls each record's destroy method, you could mock that method:
allow_any_instance_of('Car').to receive(:destroy).and_return(false) # simulates a callback halting things
allow_any_instance_of makes tests brittle however.
Finally, you could consider just not anticipating problems before they exist (maybe you don't even need the bulk delete page to be this helpful?). If your users see a more generic error, is there a page they could filter to verify for themselves what might still be there? (there's a lot of factors to consider here, it depends on the importance of the feature to the business and what sort of things could go wrong if the data is inconsistent).
Following the principle of fail-fast:
When querying the database where there should only ever be one record, I want an exception if .first() (first) encounters more than one record.
I see that there is a first! method that throws if there's less records than expected but I don't see anything for if there's two or more.
How can I get active record to fail early if there are more records than expected?
Is there a reason that active record doesn't work this way?
I'm used to C#'s Single() that will throw if two records are found.
Why would you expect activerecord's first method to fails if there are more than 1 record? it makes no sense for it to work that way.
You can define your own class method the count the records before getting the first one. Something like
def self.first_and_only!
raise "more than 1" if size > 1
first!
end
That will raise an error if there are more than 1 and also if there's no record at all. If there's one and only one it will return it.
It seems ActiveRecord has no methods like that. One useful method I found is one?, you can call it on an ActiveRecord::Relation object. You could do
users = User.where(name: "foo")
raise StandardError unless users.one?
and maybe define your own custom exception
If you care enough about queries performance, you have to avoid ActiveRecord::Relation's count, one?, none?, many?, any? etc, which spawns SQL select count(*) ... query.
So, your could use SQL limit like:
def self.single!
# Only one fast DB query
result = limit(2).to_a
# Array#many? not ActiveRecord::Calculations one
raise TooManySomthError if result.many?
# Array#first not ActiveRecord::FinderMethods one
result.first
end
Also, when you expect to get only one record, you have to use Relation's take instead of first. The last one is for really first record, and can produce useless SQL ORDER BY.
find_sole_by (Rails 7.0+)
Starting from Rails 7.0, there is a find_sole_by method:
Finds the sole matching record. Raises ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound if no record is found. Raises ActiveRecord::SoleRecordExceeded if more than one record is found.
For example:
Product.find_sole_by(["price = %?", price])
Sources:
ActiveRecord::FinderMethods#find_sole_by.
Rails 7 adds ActiveRecord methods #sole and #find_sole_by.
Rails 7.0 adds ActiveRecord::FinderMethods 'sole' and 'find_sole_by'.
I'm not sure if this is just a lacking of the Rails language, or if I am searching all the wrong things here on Stack Overflow, but I cannot find out how to add an attribute to each record in an array.
Here is an example of what I'm trying to do:
#news_stories.each do |individual_news_story|
#user_for_record = User.where(:id => individual_news_story[:user_id]).pluck('name', 'profile_image_url');
individual_news_story.attributes(:author_name) = #user_for_record[0][0]
individual_news_story.attributes(:author_avatar) = #user_for_record[0][1]
end
Any ideas?
If the NewsStory model (or whatever its name is) has a belongs_to relationship to User, then you don't have to do any of this. You can access the attributes of the associated User directly:
#news_stories.each do |news_story|
news_story.user.name # gives you the name of the associated user
news_story.user.profile_image_url # same for the avatar
end
To avoid an N+1 query, you can preload the associated user record for every news story at once by using includes in the NewsStory query:
NewsStory.includes(:user)... # rest of the query
If you do this, you won't need the #user_for_record query — Rails will do the heavy lifting for you, and you could even see a performance improvement, thanks to not issuing a separate pluck query for every single news story in the collection.
If you need to have those extra attributes there regardless:
You can select them as extra attributes in your NewsStory query:
NewsStory.
includes(:user).
joins(:user).
select([
NewsStory.arel_table[Arel.star],
User.arel_table[:name].as("author_name"),
User.arel_table[:profile_image_url].as("author_avatar"),
]).
where(...) # rest of the query
It looks like you're trying to cache the name and avatar of the user on the NewsStory model, in which case, what you want is this:
#news_stories.each do |individual_news_story|
user_for_record = User.find(individual_news_story.user_id)
individual_news_story.author_name = user_for_record.name
individual_news_story.author_avatar = user_for_record.profile_image_url
end
A couple of notes.
I've used find instead of where. find returns a single record identified by it's primary key (id); where returns an array of records. There are definitely more efficient ways to do this -- eager-loading, for one -- but since you're just starting out, I think it's more important to learn the basics before you dig into the advanced stuff to make things more performant.
I've gotten rid of the pluck call, because here again, you're just learning and pluck is a performance optimization useful when you're working with large amounts of data, and if that's what you're doing then activerecord has a batch api you should look into.
I've changed #user_for_record to user_for_record. The # denote instance variables in ruby. Instance variables are shared and accessible from any instance method in an instance of a class. In this case, all you need is a local variable.
For demo purposes, suppose that I have a class called DemoThing with a method called do_something.
Is there a way that (in code) I can check the number of times that do_something hits the database? Is there a way that I can "spy" on active record to count the number of times that the database was called?
For instance:
class DemoThing
def do_something
retVal = []
5.times do |i|
retVal << MyActiveRecordModel.where(:id => i)
end
retVal
end
end
dt = DemoThing.new
stuff = dt.do_something # want to assert that do_something hit the database 5 times
ActiveRecord should be logging each query in STDOUT.
But for the above code, it's pretty obvious that you're making 5 calls for each iteration of i.
Queries can be made more efficient by not mixing Ruby logic with querying.
In this example, gettings the ids before querying will mean that the query isn't called for each Ruby loop.
ids = 5.times.to_a
retVal = MyActiveRecordModel.where(id: ids) # .to_a if retVal needs to be an Array
Sure is. But first you must understand Rails' Query Cache and logger. By default, Rails will attempt to optimize performance by turning on a simple query cache. It is a hash stored on the current thread (one for every active database connection - Most rails processes will have just one ). Whenever a select statement is made (like find or where etc.), the corresponding result set is stored in a hash with the SQL that was used to query them as the key. You'll notice when you run the above method your log will show Model Load statement and then a CACHE statement. Your database was only queried one time, with the other 4 being loaded via cache. Watch your server logs as you run that query.
I found a gem for queries count https://github.com/comboy/sql_queries_count
I've just started to take on my first model spec task at work. After writing a lot of feature specs, I find it hard to get into the different perspective of writing model specs (not taking the context into consideration). I'll take a method of the Order model as an example, to explain which difficulties I am experiencing:
def update_order_prices
self.shipping_price_cents = SHIPPING_PRICE_CENTS unless shipping_price_cents
return if order_lines.empty?
self.total_price_cents = calculate_order_price
self.total_line_items_price_cents = calculate_total_order_line_price
self.total_tax_cents = calculate_tax_amount
end
EDIT TL;DR
I am totally happy with an answer that simply writes me a spec for this method. The rest of the post just shows what I tried so far but is not necessary to answer this question.
First approach:
At first I didn't know what to test for. I tried to find out when and where the method was called and to find a scenario where I would know what the attributes that are touched in this method should be equal to. Put short, I spent a lot of time trying to understand the context. Then a coworker said that I should test methods in model specs self-contained, independent from the context. I should just make sure I identify all cases. So for this method that would be:
it sets shipping price cents to default (if not done already)
it returns early if order_lines is empty
it sets values if order_line is set
Current approach:
I tried writing the tests for these points but still questions arise:
Test 1
it 'sets shipping price cents to default (if not done already)' do
order.shipping_price_cents = nil
order.update_order_prices
expect(order.shipping_price_cents).to eq(Order::SHIPPING_PRICE_CENTS)
end
I am confident I got this one right, but feel free to prove me wrong. I set shipping_price_cents to nil to trigger the code that sets it, call the tested method on the cents to be equal to the default value as defined in the model.
Test 2
it 'returns early if order_lines is empty' do
expect(order.update_order_prices).to eq(nil)
end
So here I want to test that the method returns early when there is no object in the order_lines association. I didn't have a clue how to do that so I went into the console, took an order, removed the order_lines associated with it, and called the method to see what would be returned.
2.3.1 :011 > o.order_lines
=> #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy []>
2.3.1 :012 > o.update_order_prices
=> nil
Then did the same for an order with associated order_line:
2.3.1 :017 > o.update_order_prices
=> 1661
So I tested for 'nil' to be returned. But it doesn't feel like I am testing the right thing.
Test 3
it 'sets (the correct?) values if order_line is set' do
order_line = create(:order_line, product: product)
order = create(:order, order_lines: [order_line])
order.update_order_prices
expect(order.total_price_cents).to eq(order.calculate_order_price)
expect(order.total_line_items_price_cents).to eq(order.calculate_order_line_price)
expect(order.total_tax_cents).to eq(order.calculate_tax_amount)
end
I simply test that the attributes equal what they are set to, without using actual values, as I shouldn't look outside. If I wanted to test for an absolute value, I would have to investigate outside of this function which then wouldn't test the method but also status of the Order object etc.?
Running the tests
Failures:
1) Order Methods: #update_order_prices sets (the correct?) values if order_line is set
Failure/Error: expect(order.total_price_cents).to eq(order.calculate_order_price)
NoMethodError:
private method `calculate_order_price' called for #<Order:0x007ff9ee643df0>
Did you mean? update_order_prices
So, the first two tests passed, the third one didn't. At this point I feel a bit lost and would love hear how some experienced developers would write this seemingly simple test.
Thanks
I guess you have to spec against the exact values you are expecting after update_order_prices.
Let's say you set up your order and order lines to have a total price of 10 euros then I'd add the following expectation
expect(order.total_price_cents).to eq(1000)
Same for the other methods. Generally I try to test against specific values. Also as you are relying on the result of a private method you only care about the result.