ContainerRecord: Two-tier ActiveRecord functionality

Rails' ActiveRecord ("AR") is implemented on the level of tables, such that each AR model corresponds to a table.

ContainerRecord ("CR") however implements an additional tier on top of AR, that implements AR-styled functionality on the database level.

Usage

To start using ContainerRecord you need to create an external_databases table in your main database. The name is fully optional, as well as the structure.

The idea is that you store a database connection settings there, like if you would store them in your standard Rails config/database.yml.

Column names should match the keys available in config/database.yml.

Example

Assuming you have a Company model in your Rails application. It is just a regular model, which has its own table, and so on:

# app/models/company.rb
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :employees
end

# app/models/employee.rb
class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :company
end

Let’s say you have 5 companies, and now you want to store their employees each in its own database. Easy - with ContainerRecord!

Just add gem 'container_record', '~> 1.0' to your Gemfile, and change your Company model the following way:

# app/models/company.rb
class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
  include ContainerRecord::ExternalDatabase

  has_external :employees

  database_name ->(company) { "#{company.name}_#{company.id}_database" }
end

# app/models/employee.rb
class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Note, we disabled belongs_to relation, as companies now live in a different database
  # belongs_to :company
end

# config/initializers/container_record.rb
ContainerRecord.configure do |config|
  config.external_database_classes = [Company]
end

That’s pretty much it!

Don’t forget to create a new database for every company (i.e. twitter_1_database, jacksonandsons_2_database etc), and migrate there your smaller "employees" table.

Now you’re able to access them just like that:

company = Company.find(1)
company.employees.where(salary: 75_000)
company.create_external_record(Employee, first_name: 'Robert', salary: 80_000)

Plans & TODOs

• ❏ To add simple migrations for external databases (aka maintain actual DB version)