I have two scaffold-generated models: Book and Bookbag. A Bookbag has-many Books, and a Book belongs-to a Bookbag. Each Book has a weight, and each Bookbag has an average-weight that is supposed to store the average weight of all of its Books. What is the best way to keep average-weight up to date?
Using a before-save filter on Bookbag doesn't work because it's not called on every update to a Book it contains, and I don't want to update average-weight on every Book update, only when a Book's weight changes.
A quick solution might be something along these lines:
class Book
def before_save
self.bookbag.update_avg if self.weight_changed?
end
end
There is another solution, if you can afford to recalculate the average as needed.
class Bookbag < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :books
def weight_average
self.books.average(:weight)
end
end
You don't need any callbacks in this case, and you leverage your database's ability to do calculations.
Related
I'm considering this an add-on question of sorts to the thread below:
Using join tables in ruby on rails
So we have 'Student' and 'Course' scaffolds joined by a many-to-many association, but in addition there is also a 'Semester' scaffold and what I wish to do is, for each student that is added to a course, for the application to search for previous iterations of the same course through past semesters, to that it's known how many times a student has taken that class before. I'm kind of mixed up at the moment as to how to implement this, so I was hoping someone could help me pin down the logic and code I should be operating by.
Some underlying assumptions I have so far:
'Course' and 'Semester' should, like 'Student' and 'Course', be joined
by a many-to-many association (many courses are taught per semester,
and a course is taught for more than one semester).
There should be an action (let's say get_student) within the course
controller to locate the student via student_id. This would be the main area I'm scratching my head as to what to do. What would this method look like in code?
Within the student-course join table I should have an attribute
'attempts' which increments each time get_student finds this
student_id combined with the course_id that calls the method.This
would be the mechanism that actually tells how many times the course
had been attempted by the student.
I initially wondered if there should be a 'semester' controller
action to activate get_student across all semesters, but now I'm
thinking that get_student should work fine without that.
Appreciate any help I can get on this. Thanks.
This is not a good answer, just a comment.
I would comment, but hear will be more clear. I ll update for the other points. This is just an ongoing feedback/discussion, not an answer.
class Semester < ApplicationRecord
has_many :courses
end
class Course < ApplicationRecord
has_many :students
end
And
semester.courses[0].students => outputs the students array for that
This could be the method to calculate the number of student that did that course:
def studentForCourse
#input_params.course_id => course id you are selecting
semester = Semester.find(input_params)
semester.courses.each do |course|
if course.id = input_params.course_id
nstudents = course.students.size
end
end
When an entity isn't associated with many other entity at the same time, should I still use many-to-many association?
For example, I understand that Author-Book relationship is a many to many, An author can write many books, a book can be written by many authors. This holds for all time.
Consider this situation. A Batch has many students at one particular time. If a student fails, he should move to the next junior batch. In other word, A student cannot belong to more than one batch at the same time. In this case, is this a many to many association?
Alternative Solution I thought:
I was thinking about putting two columns in students table. initial_batch and current_batch. I can get the student's Batch history, by checking the gaps between current and initial batch, because of the rule A student must drop to the next immediate batch. Also, batch.students exists with a has_many association in rails. So, I think that would not be a big deal.
By Batch, I mean batch of students get admitted in the same year.
I think you'd still want to use an association table (many-to-many association) because you might want to keep a history of which classes the student has taken.
If you want it to be a many-to-one and have a student belong to one class at a time, you'd have to add a class_id field to your student table. This allows you to call student.class to find their current class, but you wouldn't be able to do class.students because that relation doesn't exist. For this reason, I think it should be a many-to-many.
is this a many to many association
Yep.
An ActiveRecord association is simply a way for you to create two connected objects (ActiveRecord is an ORM -- Object Relationship Mapper).
Remember, as Ruby is object orientated, each "Model" (class) is counted as an object, invoked every time you want to populate it with data. Each ActiveRecord association for each object is accessed through a method in the object...
#app/models/student.rb
class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :subjects #-> AR appends the "subjects" method to your Student object
end
Simply, this means that even if you have the functionality for a number of different objects, you don't need to have the method populated with data.
If you have the following...
#app/models/student.rb
class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :subjects
end
#app/models/subject.rb # "class" is a reserved word
class Subject < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :students
end
This simply provides the functionality / capacity for #students.subjects etc.
What's contained inside this method is up to you to determine:
<% if #students.subjects.any? %>
<% #students.subjects.each do |subject| %>
...
<% end %>
<% end %>
I am trying to implement a reputation system in my app (similar to stackoverflow). I want to be able to show any recent additions or subtractions to the reputation score next to it. What is the best way to go about such implementation?
For e.g Reputation Score: 150 +10 or Reputation Score: 150 -20
The only method I can think of right now is create another column/field called temporary_reputation and keep the most recent addition/subtraction in there. And then maybe create a cron to clear that column every 20-30minutes. Maybe I can do something with the cache?
I think what you suggest will not solve your problem.
I would prefer implementing an extra model eg: ScoreChange which will have
timestamp
value
and the relations that are needed.
That way for each item with a reputation score you can have an aggregated score field and then show all the changes you want.
eg:
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :score_changes
def last_changes(n)
score_changes.last_changes_sum(n)
end
def score_with_last_change(n = 3)
[score, last_changes(n)]
end
and
class ScoreChange < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :item
def self.last_changes_sum(n)
order('timestamp desc').limit(n).pluck(:value).inject(&:+)
end
end
A Miniatures model has many Collections. Users can have and vote for the best Collection version of a Miniature. The votes are in a model called Imagevotes which update a counter_cache attribute in the Collections model.
What I want to do is flag Collections which are ranked first for a Miniature as GOLD, then rank the 2nd, 3rd and 4th as SILVER. I realise I can do this on the Miniature model by selecting the #miniature.collection.first, but I would like to be able to store that like you would store the vote-count in a counter_cache so that I could display the total number of GOLDS or SILVERS for any one user.
Is there a way that each model could have Boolean fields called GOLD and SILVER which would be updated as new votes are cast in the same way that a counter_cache is updated?
Any pointers and further reading much appreciated.
Update:
It occurs to me that this could also be done with a sort of second index column. A vote_position column if you will, that updated with a number from "1" for the record with the highest counter_cache number and ascended from there. Then I could use #miniature.collection.where(:vote_position => "1") or similar. Perhaps this is more ideal?
As it seems for me you just need to implement method in Miniature model:
def set_gold_and_silver
top_collections = self.collections.order("imagevotes_count desc").limit(4)
gold = top_collections.shift
gold.update_attribute :is_gold, true if gold
top_collections.each {|s| s.update_attribute :is_silver, true}
end
after that you can add it to after_create filter of Imagevotes model:
class Imagevotes < ActiveRecord::Base
after_create :set_gold_and_silver
def set_gold_and_silver
self.miniature.set_gold_and_silver
end
end
I've got a Match model and a Team model.
I want to count how many goals a Team scores during the league (so I have to sum all the scores of that team, in both home_matches and away_matches).
How can I do that? What columns should I put into the matches and teams database tables?
I'd assume your Match model looks something like this:
belongs_to :home_team, class_name:"Team"
belongs_to :away_team, class_name:"Team"
attr_accessible :home_goal_count, :away_goal_count
If so, you could add a method to extract the number of goals:
def goal_count
home_matches.sum(:home_goal_count) + away_matches.sum(:away_goal_count)
end
Since this could be expensive (especially if you do it often), you might just cache this value into the team model and use an after_save hook on the Match model (and, if matches ever get deleted, then an after_destroy hook as well):
after_save :update_team_goals
def update_team_goals
home_team.update_attribute(:goal_count_cache, home_team.goal_count)
away_team.update_attribute(:goal_count_cache, away_team.goal_count)
end
Since you want to do this for leagues, you probably want to add a belongs_to :league on the Match model, a league parameter to the goal_count method (and its query), and a goal_count_cache_league column if you want to cache the value (only cache the most recently changed with my suggested implementation, but tweak as needed).
You dont put that in any table. Theres a rule for databases: Dont ever store data in your database that could be calculated from other fields.
You can calcuate that easyly using this function:
def total_goals
self.home_matches.collect(&:home_goals).inject(&:+)+self.away_matches.collect(&:away_goals).inject(&:+)
end
that should do it for you. If you want the mathes filtered for a league you can use a scope for that.