How should i transform this concern in service object? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a concern allowing me to give the back end user the ability to sort elements. I use it for a few different elements. The rails community seems to be pretty vocal against concern and callbacks, i'd like to have a few pointers on how to better model the following code :
require 'active_support/concern'
module Rankable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
validates :row_order, :presence => true
scope :next_rank, lambda { |rank| where('row_order > ?',rank).order("row_order asc").limit(1)}
scope :previous_rank, lambda { |rank| where('row_order < ?',rank).order("row_order desc").limit(1)}
scope :bigger_rank, order("row_order desc").limit('1')
before_validation :assign_rank
end
def invert(target)
a = self.row_order
b = target.row_order
self.row_order = target.row_order
target.row_order = a
if self.save
if target.save
true
else
self.row_order = a
self.save
false
end
else
false
end
end
def increase_rank
return false unless self.next_rank.first && self.invert(self.next_rank.first)
end
def decrease_rank
return false unless self.previous_rank.first && self.invert(self.previous_rank.first)
end
private
def assign_default_rank
if !self.row_order
if self.class.bigger_rank.first
self.row_order = self.class.bigger_rank.first.row_order + 1
else
self.row_order=0
end
end
end
end

Answer 1

I think a Concern is a good choice for what you are trying to accomplish (particularly with validations and scopes because ActiveRecord does those two very well). However, if you did want to move things out of the Concern, apart from validations and scopes, here is a possibility. Just looking at the code it seems like you have a concept of rank which is represented by an integer but can become it's own object:
class Rank
def initialize(rankable)
#rankable = rankable
#klass = rankable.class
end
def number
#rankable.row_order
end
def increase
next_rank ? RankableInversionService.call(#rankable, next_rank) : false
end
def decrease
previous_rank ? RankableInversionService.call(#rankable, previous_rank) : false
end
private
def next_rank
#next_rank ||= #klass.next_rank.first
end
def previous_rank
#previous_rank ||= #klass.previous_rank.first
end
end
To extract out the #invert method we could create a RankableInversionService (referenced above):
class RankableInversionService
def self.call(rankable, other)
new(rankable, other).call
end
def initialize(rankable, other)
#rankable = rankable
#other = other
#original_rankable_rank = rankable.rank
#original_other_rank = other.rank
end
def call
#rankable.rank = #other.rank
#other.rank = #rankable.rank
if #rankable.save && #other.save
true
else
#rankable.rank = #original_rankable_rank
#other.rank = #original_other_rank
#rankable.save
#other.save
false
end
end
end
To extract out the callback you could have a RankableUpdateService which will assign the default rank prior to saving the object:
class RankableUpdateService
def self.call(rankable)
new(rankable).call
end
def initialize(rankable)
#rankable = rankable
#klass = rankable.class
end
def call
#rankable.rank = bigger_rank unless #rankable.ranked?
#rankable.save
end
private
def bigger_rank
#bigger_rank ||= #klass.bigger_rank.first.try(:rank)
end
end
Now you concern becomes:
module Rankable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
# validations
# scopes
end
def rank
#rank ||= Rank.new(self)
end
def rank=(rank)
self.row_order = rank.number; #rank = rank
end
def ranked?
rank.number.present?
end
end
I'm sure there are issues with this code if you use it as is, but you get the concept. Overall I think the only thing that might be good to do here is extracting out a Rank object, other than that it might be too much complexity that the concern encapsulates pretty nicely.