Connecting to multiple databases in ruby on rails - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a ruby on rails application working fine and connected to a database. Now i want to connect to a different database from the same application. The data model can be exactly the same. In fact if i connect to the different database the application works fine. However I want to connect to two different databases. Is it possible in ruby on rails?

Answer 1

For multiple database connection, you need to add the following codes to the database.yml file. Here, I am giving the example of connecting two databases from a rails application
config/database.yml
development:
adapter: mysql2
database: db1_dev
username: root
password: xyz
host: localhost
development_sec:
adapter: mysql2
database: db2_dev
username: root
password: xyz
host: localhost
production:
adapter: mysql2
database: db1_prod
username: root
password: xyz
host: your-production-ip
production_sec:
adapter: mysql2
database: db2_prod
username: root
password: xyz
host: your-production-ip
Here I have used two databases for the development and production environment.
Now we need to connect the model to databases. When you are running your application in development and production mode, all the models will be mapped through the development and production db parameters those been mentioned in your database.yml. So for some model we need to connect to other database.
Lets assume that, we have two models User and Category. The users table is in db1_dev and db1_prod, the categories table in db2_dev and db2_prod.
Category model
class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
establish_connection "#{Rails.env}_sec".to_sym
end
Similarly, when you adding the new migration for the second database, need to add following code to it.
class CreateRewards < ActiveRecord::Migration
def connection
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection("#{Rails.env}_sec".to_sym).connection
end
def change
# your code goes here.
end
end
Hope it will work for you :) .

Answer 2

Use establish_connection to switch to a different database:
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
:adapter => "mysql",
:host => "localhost",
:username => "myuser",
:password => "mypass",
:database => "somedatabase"
)
You can also pass a preconfigured environment from database.yml like so:
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(ActiveRecord::Base.configurations['other_env'])
You can also set it for a specific model:
MyClass.establish_connection(...)

Answer 3

You might like to note that as of Rails 6 (2019), Rails has support for multiple primary databases!
https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_record_multiple_databases.html
The database.yml file will now look something like this:
development:
primary:
database: primary_db
user: root
primary_replica:
database: primary_db
user: ro_user
replica: true
animals:
database: my_animals_db
user: root
migrations_path: db/animals_migrate
animals_replica:
database: my_animals_db
user: ro_user
replica: true
And then it's as simple as specifying in your model files:
class AnimalsModel < ApplicationRecord
self.abstract_class = true
connects_to database: { writing: :animals_primary, reading: :animals_replica }
end
class Dog < AnimalsModel
# connected to both the animals_primary db for writing and the animals_replica for reading
end
(These examples were taken from this helpful tutorial.)