Rails 6.x - Framework Agnostic Associations - part 1

Basic Associations: belongs_to and has_many

Purpose

In the interest of coding Rails in a way to work well with other code bases, I looking at ways to do complex database relations in a framework agnostic way. In particular, this article will primarily explore Polymorphic Relationships.

This is the second article in the series. This article is followed up with (part 2)[post_ruby_rails/rails_6_x_agnostic_associations_2/]

Overview

In this case, I want to model a contact list of businesses and people. Some people will be associated with a company. Additionally, we will track transactions with each person and business.

The basic model will then look something like:

                       ┌───────────┐           ┌───────────┐
                       │           │╲         ╱│           │
      ┌──────────────○┼│  Contact  │───────────│UserContact│
      │                │           │╱         ╲│           │
      │                └───────────┘           └───────────┘
      │                      ┼                      ╲│╱
      │                      ○                       │
      │                      │                       │
      │                      │                       │
     ╱│╲                    ╱│╲                      │
┌───────────┐          ┌───────────┐                 │
│           │╲         │           │                 │
│ Business  │─○───────┼│  Person   │                 │
│           │╱         │           │                 │
└───────────┘          └───────────┘                 │
     ╲│╱                    ╲│╱                      │
      │                      │                       │
      │                      │                       │
      │                      ○                       │
      │                      ┼                      ╱│╲
      │                ┌───────────┐           ┌───────────┐
      │                │           │          ╱│           │
      └──────────────○┼│  Remark   │┼──────────│   User    │
                       │           │          ╲│           │
                       └───────────┘           └───────────┘
                    Created with Monodraw

Create a default Rails app

rails new rails_poly
cd rails_poly
bin/rails db:create
bin/rails db:migrate
git add .
git commit -m "initial commit"

Starting Simple - optional relations

Build Businesses

Lets start with the simple relationship between businesses and people:

┌────────────┐             ┌───────────┐
│            │╲          1 │           │
│  Business  │─○──────────┼│  Person   │
│-legal_name │╱0..*        │-full_name │
└────────────┘             └───────────┘

For expedience, I’ll use scaffolds:

Generating a simple business model.

rails g scaffold Business legal_name

Lets adjust the migration to require the business’ legal name, by adding null: false to the name:

# db/migrate/20210516080420_create_businesses.rb
class CreateBusinesses < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.1]
  def change
    create_table :businesses do |t|
      t.string :legal_name, null: false

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Now we will validate the business’ name in the model:

# app/models/business.rb
class Business < ApplicationRecord
  validates :legal_name, presence: true
end

Now lets be sure we can migrate:

bin/rails db:migrate

lets use seed to quickly check our models and relations (& get an idea of how to use them):

# db/seeds.rb
business = Business.create(legal_name: "Business")

Lets check the seed with:

bin/rails db:seed

Assuming this works, let’s see the “/businesses” page:

bin/rails s
open localhost:3000/businesses/

Great - lets snapshot:

git add .
git commit -m "created business model"

Build People

Now let’s build the person model and its relations to businesses.

rails g scaffold Person full_name business:references

In this case we want the person to optionally be a member of a business, so lets update the both the models and the migration. Starting with the migration, we need to remove null: false in the foreign key, and add that to the name - so it should now look like:

# db/migrate/20210516080414_create_people.rb
class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.1]
  def change
    create_table :people do |t|
      t.string :full_name, null: false
      t.references :company, foreign_key: true

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

Now lets adjust the person model - we’ll make the relation optional with optional: true and require the name with the validation validates :full_name, presence: true, so it should now look like:

# app/models/person.rb
class Person < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :company, optional: true

  validates :full_name, presence: true
end

And lets let the Business know it can have lots of people with has_many :people - now the model will look like:

# app/models/business.rb
class Business < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :people

  validates :legal_name, presence: true
end

Lets check the migrations work:

bin/rails db:migrate

lets use seed a couple of people too - so it now looks like:

# db/seed.rb
business = Business.create(legal_name: "Business")
company = Business.create(legal_name: "Company")

company.build_person(full_name: "Company Man")
company.save

person = Person.create(full_name: "Own Person")

Lets check the seed with:

bin/rails db:seed

Now lets check our pages again:

bin/rails s
open localhost:3000

Lets check the index pages

On the business page it would be nice to see how many employees - so we can update the model with:

# app/models/business.rb
class Business < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :people

  validates :legal_name, presence: true

  def people_count
    people.count
  end
end

And now people_count is added as a virtual attribute (as well as all other business fields because of 'businesses.*) - now we can use in our view using = <td><%= business.people_count %></td> so now it would look something like:

# app/views/businesses/index.html.erb
<h1>Businesses</h1>

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Legal name</th>
      <th>Employee Count</th>
      <th colspan="3"></th>
    </tr>
  </thead>

  <tbody>
    <% @businesses.each  do |business| %>
    <tr>
      <td><%= business.legal_name %></td>
      <td><%= business.people_count %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Show', business %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_business_path(business) %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', business, method: :delete, data: { confirm: 'Are you sure?' } %></td>
    </tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>
</table>

and on the ‘/people’ page it would be nice to see there business name instead of id.

so in the model:

# app/model/person.rb
class Person < ApplicationRecord
  belongs_to :business, optional: true

  validates :full_name, presence: true

  def associated_business_name
    business&.legal_name
  end
end

and in the index view:

# app/views/people/index.html.erb
<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Full name</th>
      <th>Business</th>
      <th colspan="3"></th>
    </tr>
  </thead>

  <tbody>
    <% @people.each do |person| %>
    <tr>
      <td><%= person.full_name %></td>
      <td><%= person.associated_business_name %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Show', person %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_person_path(person) %></td>
      <td><%= link_to 'Destroy', person, method: :delete, data: { confirm: 'Are you sure?' } %></td>
    </tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>
</table>

to show all employees on the business show page we can do:

# app/views/businesses/show.html.erb
<p>
  <strong>Legal name:</strong>
  <%= @business.legal_name %>
</p>

<table>
  <thead>
    <tr>
      <th>Employee</th>
    </tr>
  </thead>
  <tbody>
    <% @business.people.each do |person| %>
    <tr><td>person.full_name</td></tr>
    <% end %>
  </tbody>

</table>

And now lets look for n+1 queries - to do that we will create many records in the seeds file:

# db/seeds.rb
business = Business.create(legal_name: "Business")
company  = Business.create(legal_name: "Company")
boss_man = Person.create(full_name: "Company Man", business: company)
person = Person.create(full_name: "Own Person")

# larger numbers (look for n+1 lookups)
50.times do |business_number|
  company  = Business.create(legal_name: "Company #{business_number}")
  business_number.times do |employee_number|
    Person.create(full_name: "Employee #{employee_number}",
                  business: company)
  end
end

Now when we visit ‘/people’ we see an n+1 (to look up the business to get the business name) - this is an easy fix with a pre-load in the controller - just add .include(:business) to the query - now the index method will look like

# app/controllers/people_controller.rb
class PeopleController < ApplicationController

  def index
    @people = Person.include(:business).all
  end

Fix n+1 lookups - for the business employee count is a bit trickier - to avoid lots of look ups we need the db to do the count and add the count as a virtual attribute - this is done with the following query:

# app/controllers/people_controller.rb
class BusinessController < ApplicationController

  def index
    # businesses = Business.all  # (N+1 when using referring to people)
    # select must go last or it gets lost / overwritten
    @businesses = Business.joins(:people)
                          .group('businesses.id')
                          .select('businesses.*, count(people.id) as people_count')
  end

to avoid confusion - lets rename the method in the class to employee_count:

# app/models/business.rb
class Business < ApplicationRecord
  has_many :people

  validates :legal_name, presence: true

  def employee_count
    people.count
  end
end

lets run the seeds again:

bin/rails db:seed

cool now when we look at the log we just have one query instead of many!

Now let’s make the people form to associate a business by name instead of the id!

# app/views/people/_form.html.erb
<%= form_with(model: person) do |form| %>
  <% if person.errors.any? %>
    <div id="error_explanation">
      <h2><%= pluralize(person.errors.count, "error") %> prohibited this person from being saved:</h2>

      <ul>
        <% person.errors.each do |error| %>
          <li><%= error.full_message %></li>
        <% end  %>
      </ul>
    </div>
  <% end %>

  <div class="field">
    <%= form.label :full_name %>
    <%= form.text_field :full_name %>
  </div>

  <div class="field">
    <%= form.label :business %>
    <%= form.select :business_id,
                    Business.all.collect { |b| [ b.legal_name, b.id ] },
                    prompt: "Select One", include_blank: true %>
  </div>

  <div class="actions">
    <%= form.submit %>
  </div>
<% end  %>

Great - lets snapshot:

git add .
git commit -m "created person related to businesses - w/o n+1"

Polymorphic (STI) - sometime called inverse polymorphic

          ┌───────────────┐
          │    Contact    │
          │  (functions)+ │ + supplier, reseller, customer, sales-rep
          │(display_name)*│ * virtual attribute
          └───────────────┘
                  ┼ 1
     ┌────────────┴─────────────┐
    ╱│╲ *                    * ╱│╲

┌───────────────┐ ┌───────────────┐ │ Business │╲ 1 │ Person │ │ (legal_name) │ ○ ─ ─ ─ ┼│ (full_name) │ │(display_name)│╱ 0.. │(display_name)*│ └───────────────┘ └───────────────┘

A contact could be either a person or a business - but must be one or the other.

This is implemented in (part 2)[post_ruby_rails/rails_6_x_agnostic_associations_2/]

Polymorphic

a model associated with several different models - serving a similar purpose in both cases

  ┌────────────┐          ┌───────────┐
  │            │╲       1 │           │
  │  Business  │ ○ ─ ─ ─ ┼│  Person   │
  │            │╱ 0..*    │           │
  └────────────┘          └───────────┘
        ╲│╱ *                * ╲│╱
         └───────────┬──────────┘
                     ┼ 1
             ┌──────────────┐
             │              │
             │  Transaction │
             │              │
             └──────────────┘

A contact could be either a person or a business - but must be one or the other.

bin/rails g Contact roles:array business:references person:references

update the migration to ensure we have a role provided & relations:

#

update the Contact model with the validations & flexible relations:

# contact.rb

update the Person model and relations:

# person.rb

update the Business model and relations:

# business.rb

lets use seed a couple of people too - so it now looks like:

# db/seed.rb
business = Business.create(legal_name: "Business")
company = Business.create(legal_name: "Company")

company.build_person(full_name: "Company Man")
company.save

person = Person.create(full_name: "Own Person")

Lets check the seed with:

bin/rails db:seed

Assuming this works, let’s see the “/people” page:

bin/rails s
open localhost:3000/businesses/

Great - lets snapshot:

git add .
git commit -m "created person possibly related to the model"
Bill Tihen
Bill Tihen
Developer, Data Enthusiast, Educator and Nature’s Friend

very curious – known to explore knownledge and nature