active_record

Active Record pattern implementation for Crystal.

Don't confuse with Ruby's activerecord: aim of this is to be true to OO techniques and true to the Active Record pattern. Small, simple, useful for non-complex domain models. For complex domain models better use Data Mapper pattern.

Work in progress

Contents:

• Installation
• TODO
• Usage
  • Define your model
  • Create a new record
  • Get existing record by id
  • Query multiple records
  • Update existing record
  • Delete existing record
  • Enforcing encapsulation
  • Query DSL
  • Connection configuration
  • Connection pool configuration
  • Joins
• Known database adapters
• Development
  • Creating your own database adapter
• Contributing

TODO

• Implement model definition syntax
• Implement field_level
• Implement NullAdapter (in-memory, for specs)
• Implement #create, .create and .get
• Implement .where
• Implement query_level
• Implement #update and #delete
• Implement better query DSL
• Default table_name implementation
• Implement mysql adapter
• Populate this list further by making some simple app on top of it
• Describe in readme how to implement your own adapter
• Add transaction features
• Implement postgres driver
• Support more types (currently only Int | String are supported)
  • Time
  • Bool
  • Arbitrary type that supports specific interface
• Support joins

Installation

Add it to shard.yml:

dependencies:
  active_record:
    github: waterlink/active_record.cr
    version: ~> 0.4

Additionally you would need to choose your database driver adapter. For example, if you want to use waterlink/postgres_adapter.cr, then you would add this dependency:

  postgres_adapter:
    github: waterlink/postgres_adapter.cr

See list of known adapters.

Usage

require "active_record"
# And require your chosen database adapter:
require "postgres_adapter"

Define your model

class Person < ActiveRecord::Model

  # Set adapter to your chosen adapter name
  adapter postgres

  # Set table name, defaults to "#{lowercase_name}s"
  # table_name people

  # Database fields
  primary id                 : Int
  field last_name            : String
  field first_name           : String
  field number_of_dependents : Int

  # Domain logic
  def get_tax_exemption
    # ...
  end

  def get_taxable_earnings
    # ...
  end

end

Create a new record

# Combine .new(..) and #create
Person.new({ "first_name"           => "John",
             "last_name"            => "Smith",
             "number_of_dependents" => 3 }).create #=> #<Person: ...>

# Or shortcut with .create(..)
Person.create({ "first_name"           => "John",
                "last_name"            => "Smith",
                "number_of_dependents" => 3 })     #=> #<Person: ...>

Get existing record by id

Person.get(127)  #=> #<Person: @id=127, ...>

Query multiple records

# Get all records
Person.all         # => [#<Person: ...>, #<Person: ...>, ...]

# Query by hash
Person.where({ "number_of_dependents" => 0 })   #=> [#<Person: ...>, #<Person: ...>, ...]

# Or construct a query object
include ActiveRecord::CriteriaHelper
Person.where(criteria("number_of_dependents") > 3)    #=> [#<Person: ...>, #<Person: ...>, ...]

See Query DSL

Update existing record

person = Person.get(127)
person.number_of_dependents = 0
person.update

Delete existing record

Person.get(127).delete

Enforcing encapsulation

If you care about OO techniques, code quality and handling complexity, please enable this for your models.

class Person < ActiveRecord::Model

  # Default is public for ease of use
  field_level :private
  # field_level :protected

  query_level :private
  # default is public, there is no point in protected here

  # ...
end

# Enforces you to maintain encapsulation, ie: not expose your data -
# put behavior in the same place the data it needs
person = Person.get(127)    # or Person[127]
person.first_name   #=> Error: unable to call private method first_name

# Enforces you to maintain DRYness to some extent, ie: not leak
# knowledge about your database structure, but put it in active record
# model and expose your own nit-picked methods
Person.where({ :first_name => "John" })    #=> Error: unable to call private method where

Query DSL

This library uses https://github.com/waterlink/query.cr/ for handling query construction and query DSL.

Generally to use #criteria DSL method, you need to include ActiveRecord::CriteriaHelper, but inside of your model code you don't need to do that.

Examples (comment is in format [sql_query, params]):

criteria("person_id") == 3                            # [person_id = :1, { "1" => 3 }]
criteria("person_id") == criteria("other_person_id")  # [person_id = other_person_id, {}]

criteria("number") <= 3                               # [number < :1, { "1" => 3 }]

(!(criteria("number") <= 3))                          # [(NOT (number <= :1)) AND (number <> :2),
  .and(criteria("number") != 5)                       #  { "1" => 3, "2" => 5 }]

criteria("subject_id").is_not_null                    # [(subject_id) IS NOT NULL, {}]

Supported comparison operators: == != > >= < <=

Supported logic operators: or | and & xor ^ not

Supported is operators: is_true is_not_true is_false is_not_false is_unknown is_not_unknown is_null is_not_null

Filtering with IN (..., ..., ...) query:

criteria("subject_id").in([37, 42, 45])

Connection configuration

Connection configuration is delegated to the database adapter library. So find it in the respective library's documentation. Known adapters.

Connection Pool configuration (Experimental)

Each distinct model class has its own associated connection pool. By default, pool capacity is 1 and timeout is 2 seconds. These settings can be changed on per model basis:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Model
  @@connection_pool_capacity = 25
  @@connection_pool_timeout = 0.03  # seconds
end

Joins (TODO)

This is still not implemented.

class User < ActiveRecord::Model
  has_many Post, criteria("posts.author_id") == criteria("users.id")
  # ...
end

class Post < ActiveRecord::Model
  belongs_to User, criteria("posts.author_id") == criteria("users.id")
  # ...
end

# makes only one join query
posts = Post.join(User).all
posts.first.title      # => "Hello world post"
posts.first.user.name  # => "John Smith"

# makes 2 queries - 'select from users' and 'select from posts'
user = User.all.first
user.posts.first.title  # => "Hello world post"
user.posts[1].title     # => "Yet another post"

Known database adapters

• mysql_adapter.cr
• postgres_adapter.cr
• sqlite_adapter.cr

Development

After cloning the project:

cd active_record.cr
crystal deps   # install dependencies
crystal spec   # run specs

Just use normal TDD development style.

Creating your own database adapter

So, lets create a postgres adapter. First lets init the repo:

# This creates 'postgres_adapter' library and names directory as 'postgres_adapter.cr'.
# Effectively giving you structure './postgres_adapter.cr/src/mysql_adapter.cr'.
crystal init lib postgres_adapter postgres_adapter.cr

# And lets cd into it right away:
cd postgres_adapter.cr/

Next feel free to edit the README to reflect the usage as you see fit. And check out if generated LICENSE file is OK.

At this point it is a good idea to make an initial commit to git and push your changes to Github (or whatever git upstream you use).

Before the next step you will need active_record bundled as a submodule at path modules/active_record, for that you do:

git submodule add https://github.com/waterlink/active_record.cr modules/active_record

You need to have it as a submodule to be able to require code from spec/ directory.

Next step is to add appropriate integration test boilerplate:

Integration spec:

# integration/integration_spec.cr
require "./spec_helper"

Integration spec helper:

# integration/spec_helper.cr
require "spec"
require "../src/postgres_adapter"
require "active_record/null_adapter"

# Register our adapter as 'null' adapter, effectively overriding what was
# registered before by 'active_record':
ActiveRecord::Registry.register_adapter("null", PostgresAdapter::Adapter)

# Cleanup database before and after each example:
Spec.before_each do
  PostgresAdapter::Adapter._reset_do_this_only_in_specs_78367c96affaacd7
end
Spec.after_each do
  PostgresAdapter::Adapter._reset_do_this_only_in_specs_78367c96affaacd7
end

# Require fake adapter and kick off the integration spec
require "../modules/active_record/spec/fake_adapter"
require "../modules/active_record/spec/active_record_spec"

Integration test runner script:

# bin/test
#!/usr/bin/env bash

set -e

# Run unit tests
crystal spec

# Compile integration tests that are shipped with
crystal build integration/integration_spec.cr -o integration/integration_spec -D active_record_adapter
./integration/integration_spec --fail-fast -v $*

Script for setting up the database:

# script/setup-test-db.sh
#!/usr/bin/env bash

# By providing 'PG_USER' and ('PG_PASS' or `PG_ASK_PASS`) you can
# control how this script will authenticate to local pg server.
PARAMS="-U ${PG_USER:-postgres}"
[[ -z "$PG_PASS" ]] || PGPASSWORD="$PG_PASS"
[[ -z "$PG_ASK_PASS" ]] || PARAMS="$PARAMS -W"

psql $PARAMS -c "create database crystal_pg_test"
psql $PARAMS -c "create user crystal_pg with superuser password 'crystal_pg'"

psql $PARAMS crystal_pg_test -c "drop table if exists people; create table people( id serial primary key, last_name varchar(50), first_name varchar(50), number_of_dependents int )"
psql $PARAMS crystal_pg_test -c "drop table if exists something_else; create table something_else( id serial primary key, name varchar(50) )"
psql $PARAMS crystal_pg_test -c "drop table if exists posts; create table posts( id serial primary key, title varchar(50), content text, created_at timestamp )"

Make all scripts executable:

chmod a+x bin/test
chmod a+x script/setup-test-db.sh

And setup test db:

script/setup-test-db.sh

If you run tests at this point with bin/test, you should get compile error, since you have not implemented ActiveRecord::Adapter protocol. You can find it here.

First make some stub implementation for this protocol:

# src/postgres_adapter.cr
require "active_record"
require "active_record/adapter"

module PostgresAdapter
  class Adapter < ActiveRecord::Adapter
    def self.build(table_name, primary_field, fields, register = true)
      new(table_name, primary_field, fields, register)
    end

    def self.register(adapter)
      adapters << adapter
    end

    def self.adapters
      (@@_adapters ||= [] of self).not_nil!
    end

    getter table_name, primary_field, fields

    def initialize(@table_name, @primary_field, @fields, register = true)
      self.class.register(self)
    end

    def create(fields)
      0
    end

    def get(id)
      nil
    end

    def all
      [] of Hash(String, ActiveRecord::SupportedType)
    end

    def where(query_hash : Hash)
      all
    end

    def where(query : Query::Query)
      all
    end

    def update(id, fields)
    end

    def delete(id)
    end

    # Resets all data for all registered adapter instances of this kind
    def self._reset_do_this_only_in_specs_78367c96affaacd7
      adapters.each &_reset_do_this_only_in_specs_78367c96affaacd7
    end

    # Resets all data for current table (adapter instance)
    def _reset_do_this_only_in_specs_78367c96affaacd7
    end
  end
end

Of course you need to include active_record as a dependency in your shard.yml:

dependencies:
  active_record:
    github: waterlink/active_record.cr

To install it, run shards or crystal deps.

With this boilerplate you should have actually compiled integration test and it should be RED. Next step would be to follow TDD and make it green example-by-example while replacing stub implementation with real one.

When you are done, congratulate yourself and push first release (git tag) to Github (or whatever git upstream you use).

Don't forget to register your adapter:

# At the end of src/postgres_adapter.cr
ActiveRecord::Registry.register_adapter("postgres", PostgresAdapter::Adapter)

Congratulations, you made it!

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/waterlink/active_record.cr/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• waterlink Oleksii Fedorov - creator, maintainer