Database views and Rails

When it comes to using database views then most of us think that it is difficult to use them with Rails or we may not be able to use ActiveRecord with it. Since I experimented with it in the past so I thought why not share it with you folks.

There are several situations when we would like to use database views with our Rails application like:

Situation 1:

If we have a complex SQL query that we don’t want to code in your Rails app due to performance related or any other issues.

Situation 2:

When our database guys have already spent a great amount of time writing useful views that can be used in the current app

Situation 3:

When we have some repeated query to run in every select statement to fetch data from every table. For instance
Select * from table_name where created_on < today;

In that case we would prefer to have a view with this query and call that view.

In all the above situations, it is pretty easy to use our database views with Rails.

How?

Simply create your model as you would for a table and it will work fine just like your model for a database table.

Interesting thing is, apart from viewing data using views I can even update, delete and insert data in my database tables using my views with all those ActiveRecord/ORM niceties (in Sybase) as long as each database view consists of only one table. If you are using more than one table in your database views then you can only view data but cannot do delete, update and insert operation.

I think this is really useful if we have a database that do not conform to Rails conventions but we would like to follow those conventions without changing the current database if other applications depend on it as well. Simply create views for each table in the database and use those views for our models instead of actual tables.

Those single table views (in other words updatable views) will allow us to follow Rails database conventions without changing our existing database tables while also keeping our database guys happy ;o)

(Though we also have other options if we are not following rails conventions)

NOTE: I have tried updatable views only with Sybase and would love to know about your experience with other databases.

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Stored Procedures and Rails - Part 2

Continued from Stored Procedures and Rails - Part 1

Now we know how to call our good and reliable stored procedures but there is a difference when we get records from database using Rails ORM/ActiveRecord compared to a stored procedure. This requires a different approach to access records returned from a stored procedure.

Lets say we have a table orders and a corresponding model Order. We all know, how to access data using ActiveRecord, eg.

@orders = Order.find(:all, :conditions => ["some simple condition"])

then what is returned to us is an array of order objects which we can access by either using a block or a for loop. For instance,

for order in @orders
  puts order.order_name
end

but this is not possible in case if we use a stored procedure to get data on orders because we don’t get back an array of order objects instead we simply get back an array of hashes, ie. an array of records with their attributes and values. Hence, the above code will not work.
Lets say you call your stored procedure, like this

@orders = CallStoredProcedure.fetch_records("exec procedure_name 'args1', 'args2'")

as mentioned in the previous post.
Then you need to access records with a little modification within your for loop

for order in @orders
  puts order['order_name']
end

I thought this might save sometime who are new to using stored procedures.

NOTE: The only downside of using stored procedures in Rails currently is; you cannot use the Object Relational Mapping which you might have been used to by know, ie. picking all children of an order by simply typing

order.children

The best thing to do is to use stored procedures judiciously and mainly for complex logic/calculation in your database but when you want to do something simple with your data like simply showing something or a quick update then use ORM over stored procedures.

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Stored Procedures and Rails - Part 1

There is no documentation in Rails about how to use stored procedures or atleast it is difficult to find where to look at. And according to DHH stored procedures is not the Rails Way to do things. DHH mentioned in his post

I want a single layer of cleverness: My domain model. Object-orientation is all about encapsulating clever. Letting it sieve half ways through to the database is a terrible violation of those fine intentions. And I want no part of it.

I somewhat agree to what DHH has to say. And that’s all fine but what if we don’t have any other option apart from using stored procedure and our stored procedure has some complex logic which we don’t want to put in our Ruby code then here is a little hack to it

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute("execute procedure_name")

But the above line will not return anything it will only execute your procedure, considering everything went OK.

Moreover, it’s not DRY if everytime you have to write that line of code just to call a procedure.

Here is a better way to do it:

1) Create a class and let’s call it

Class CallStoredProcedures
  your methods here .......
end

2) Create a class method within it

def self.fetch_db_records(proc_name_with_parameters)
  ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(proc_name_with_parameters)
end

Then simply call it as

CallStoredProcedures.fetch_db_records("exec procedure_name 'args1', 'args2', 'and so on' ")

Now you might say, that this will only execute a procedure (as I mentioned above) what if I want to return records or values from stored procedures. Then I will prefer class methods and this is how I would do it,

class CallStoredProcedures < ActiveRecord::Base

  def self.fetch_db_records(proc_name_with_parameters)
    connection.select_all(proc_name_with_parameters)
  end

  def self.insert_update_delete_calculate(proc_name_with_parameters)
    connection.execute(proc_name_with_parameters)
  end

  def self.fetch_val_from_sp(proc_name_with_parameters)
    connection.select_value(proc_name_with_parameters)
  end

end

And then simply call it like

CallStoredProcedures.method_name("exec procedure_name 'args1', 'args2', 'and so on' ")

Sweet…

If you know a better way to do it then I would love to know your views.

Stored Procedures and Rails - Part 2

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RSS Feeds + Ruby on Rails + Web App

The Feedtools library is a very comprehensive and powerful Ruby library for handling rss, atom, etc as well as caching. It makes creating, consuming and manipulating feeds a piece of cake.

It’s ideal for parsing RSS feeds in Ruby on Rails applications.

Assuming that you already have installed Ruby and Rubygem, simply run

gem install feedtools

to install the FeedTools gem

or download it from the FeedTools project page and put the untar/unzipped folder in the vendor/plugins directory of your app.

To do a very quick test, create a file called testfeed.rb and add the below code in it:

    require "RubyGems"
    require "feed_tools"

    feedurls = 'http://www.sphred.com/combined_feed'
    # If you want to fetch more than one feed then comment the above feedurls variable and   uncomment the below one.
    #feedurls = %w(http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sphred_top_10_feeds   http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sphred_site_only http://feeds.feedburner.com/Sphred_site_feature)
    my_feeds = FeedTools::build_merged_feed feedurls

    my_feeds.title = 'Sphred.com Feed'
    my_feeds.copyright = 'SPhred'
    my_feeds.author = 'Nasir '
    my_feeds.id = "http://www.sphred.com/combined_feed"

    File.open('./my_feeds.xml', 'w') do |file|
      file.puts my_feeds.build_xml()
    end

    puts "Checkout Sphred.com while I fetct feeds for you"

Running this file from IRB will create a my_feeds.xml file in your current directory with all the feed contents.

To show feeds on a website, you need to do a few things:
1) Put

require "feed_tools"

at the top of your controller
2) Create an action within this controller to show your feeds, lets call that action user_data

    def user_data
      @feed = FeedTools::Feed.open(params[:feed_url])
      # You can first test it with a static feed url like this
      #@feed = FeedTools::Feed.open(’http://www.sphred.com/combined_feed’)
    end

3) In the corresponding view add this code

  <div class="feeds">
    <h3>
      <a href="<%= h @feed.link %>">
      <%= @feed.title %></a>
    </h3>
    <p><%= @feed.description %></p>
    <% for feed in @feed.items %>
      <div class="feed_item">
        <h4>
          <a href="<%= h feed.link %>">
          <%= feed.title %></a>
        </h4>
        <p><%= feed.description %></p>
     </div>
   <% end %>
 </div>

This is all good for development environment or for small apps but once you go to production environment then you have to think of caching to avoid hitting the feed server every time before displaying feed contents.

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Not binding your selection list to a particular model in Rails

In Rails, we use collection_select helper to display values from a particular model using a drop down but it is generally tied to a particular model, i.e. if we look at the generated html then we see something like

select name=”customer[customer_search]” id=”customer_customer_search”

What if we want something like:

select name=”customer_search” id=”customer_search”

Then we can simply use select_tag helper and get the values from our model like this

customers = Customer.find(:all, :order => ‘first_name’).map{|x| [x.full_name] + [x.id]}
select_tag(:customer_search, options_for_select(customers))

If we don’t want to display the values from model and would like to feed in something simple and manually, then

customers = [['text_to_display1', 'value1'], ['text_to_display2', 'value2']]
select_tag(:customer_search, options_for_select(customers))

If text_to_display and its value both are same then we can use something as simple as:

customers = ['wee', 'asdf']
select_tag(:customer_search, options_for_select(customers))


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Pagination in Ruby On Rails using will_paginate plugin

We do pagination in Rails by using its built in paginate method in our controller


def display_data
@display_data_pages, @display_data = paginate(:location_data,
:conditions => ["loc.updated_at < ?", params[:date]],
:joins => “as loc inner join location_address as locadd on loc.id = locadd.id”
:per_page => 10,
:order => “location_name”)
end

Often we would like to put this code inside our model mainly for two reasons:
1) Code Reuse, and
2) To keep the business logic where it belongs
But we couldn’t do that (since it is difficult to do) due to the paginate method and had to write the same code more than once in the controller and sometimes in more than one controller.
On top of that we have to put this chunk of code in our views only to show the pagination links
<div class="pagination">
<%= if @survdefault_pages.current.previous
link_to(”< Prev”, { :page => @survdefault_pages.current.previous })
end %>

<%= pagination_links(@survdefault_pages) %>

<%= if @survdefault_pages.current.next
link_to(”Next >”, { :page => @survdefault_pages.current.next})
end %>
</div>

We can put this code inside a partial but it is still a pain.

Moreover, Rails’ built in pagination will be out of Rails before it will reach version 2 which is not that far.

Update: Rails built in pagination is now removed but is still available as a plugin, ie, classic_pagination.

We have another option, use will_paginate plugin. The advantages of will_paginate plugin are:
1) Easy to use,
2) Less code in views to show pagination links, and
3) It can be used inside models

Follow these steps to use will_paginate plugin

1) Grab it, by going to the command prompt and change directory to the app root. Then run
ruby script/plugin install svn://errtheblog.com/svn/plugins/will_paginate
NOTE If the above code doesn’t installs the plugin in your vendor/plugins directory then you probably don’t have svn installed on your machine.

2) Now in our controller we can simply write

def display_data
@display_data = LocationData.paginate(:page => params[:page],
:conditions => ["loc.updated_at < ?", params[:date]],
:joins => “as loc inner join location_address as locadd on loc.id = locadd.id”, :per_page => 10,
:order => “location_name”)
end

:per_page and :page are required.
The best thing is, as mentioned above, we can move this code to the LocationData model that will help in keeping our controller clean and will also help in code reuse.
To do that, we can create a class method in our model like:

def self.display_location_data(update_date, page)
paginate(:page => page, :conditions => ["loc.updated_at < ?", update_date], :joins => “as loc inner join location_address as locadd on loc.id = locadd.id”,
:per_page => 10,
:order => “location_name”)
end

In our controller, the display_data method will now be replaced with just one line

def display_data
@display_data = LocationData.display_location_data(params[:date], params[:page])
end

In the view, the big chunk of code will be replaced by a single line to show our pagination links, like

<%= will_paginate @display_data %>

And we are done…

UPDATE: Formatting / Styling pagination links

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Getting a random line from a file - and a question!!!

line = IO.readlines('some_file')
c = rand*line.length.to_i
puts line[c-1]

Very simple logic and it can be easily understood by just looking at the code itself. No explanation needed. If someone knows a better way to do it then please post it in the comments. BTW..thats in ruby.

I am really puzzled about something and would like to know your answer since you are here. The question is, when or under what conditions an experienced programmer cannot write a code like this
print something if some_other_thing == something_else

Considering that the guy has written codes like this thousands of times and hundreds of times involving very complex logic.

My thoughts are below, you can use the comment form for yours:

1) when the guy hasn’t understood the problem fully

2) when the guy is sleeping

3) when the guy is stressed

4) when the guy is not able to focus

5) when the guy is dumb, no i don’t think a dumb guy can become an experienced programmer

PS. I would like to expand on this post in future and write in detail about it once I thought about it fully and gathered some opinions.

PPS. I would also like to know if someone else had similar experiences / aware of stories like this in other fields as well, not necessarily in programming.

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How to get acts_as_attachement plugin working on mac osx

If you want to use acts as attachement for image upload/manipulation as well then first you need to install imagemagick (and its dependencies) and RMagick.

Before installing imagemagick you also need to install the following libraries as well:

1) libjpeg

Download it from http://www.ijg.org/files/jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz

tar zxvf jpegsrc.v6b.tar.gz
cd jpeg-6b
cp /usr/share/libtool/config.sub .
cp /usr/share/libtool/config.guess .
./configure –enable-shared –enable-static
make
sudo make install
sudo ranlib /usr/local/lib/libjpeg.a


2) libpng

Download it from http://www.libpng.org

tar zxvf libpng-1.2.22.tar.gz
cd libpng*
./configure
make check
sudo make install
sudo ranlib /usr/local/lib/libpng.a


3) freetype

Download it from http://download.savannah.nongnu.org/releases/freetype/

tar zxvf freetype-2.3.5.tar.gz
cd freetype*
./configure
make
sudo make install


4) libwmf

Download it from http://wvware.sourceforge.net/libwmf.html

tar zxvf libwmf-0.2.8.tar.gz
cd libwmf*
./configure
make check
sudo make install


5) ghostscript

Download it from http://pages.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/index.htm

tar zxvf ghostscript-8.01.tar.gz
cd ghostscript*
./configure
make
sudo make install


Imagemagick installation
Download it from http://www.imagemagick.org/script/download.php

tar zxvf Imagemagick-6.3.2.tar.gz
cd Imagemag*
export CPPFLAGS=-I/opt/local/include
export LDFLAGS=-L/opt/local/lib
./configure –prefix=/opt/local –disable-static –with-modules –without-perl \
–without-magick-plus-plus –with-quantum-depth=8 \
–with-gs-font-dir=/opt/local/share/ghostscript/fonts
make
sudo make install

RMagick Installation
If ruby and gem package manager is installed on your machine then simply do
sudo gem install rmagick
To check whether it is installed properly;
- go to terminal and run
irb -rubygems -r RMagick
irb(main):001:0> puts Magick::Long_version

this should give you the following output

This is RMagick 1.15.10 ($Date: 2007/06/09 16:45:25 $) Copyright (C) 2007 by Timothy P. Hunter
Built with ImageMagick 6.3.2 10/28/07 Q8 http://www.imagemagick.org
Built for ruby 1.8.6 (2006-12-25 patchlevel 0) [i686-darwin8.9.1]]
Web page: http://rmagick.rubyforge.org
Email: rmagick@rubyforge.org

Installing rmagick from source

tar xvzf RMagick.tar.gz
cd RMagick*
./configure
make
sudo make install

Using Act_as_attachment
I was about to write this but then I found a very good tutorial on installing and using acts_as_attachment here.

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Full text search using Ferret (acts_as_ferret) with rails

I recently started working with acts_as_ferret so I thought to put together a little how to:

Assuming you already have ruby on rails environment set up

1) To install it run gem install ferret
this will prompt you to select a gem for your platform

2) go to your rails project root directory and run
script/plugin install svn://projects.jkraemer.net/acts_as_ferret/tags/stable/acts_as_ferret

3) Add require 'acts_as_ferret' to your config/environment.rb

4) Resart your app

To add full text search capability to a model simply add this within your model

acts_as_ferret

To add full text search capability to a model but on some specific attributes/field_names add this

acts_as_ferret :fields => [ :author, :content ]

How to perform search?

If your model name is location then you can use

Location.find_by_contents(search_criteria)

Note: If you have very large number of records then it might take a while to run your search for the first time as it indexes all the records

If you want to use pagination or multiple models then use
Location.find_with_ferret query, :page => params[:page], :per_page => 10,
:multi => [ Model_2, Model_3 ]

I will be adding some advanced stuff later on …

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