How do I initialize a constant from a function? - ruby

I'm writing a module which will use Sequel ORM. I want to be able to set the DB constant so it's available in the global namespace but I can't figure out a non-hacky way to do so. Here's what I have so far:
require 'sequel'
module BB
class Dal
def initialize(db_url)
self.class.connect(db_url)
end
def self.connect(db_url)
#db = Sequel.connect( db_url )
end
end
BB::Dal.connect(ENV['DATABASE_URL']) if ENV['DATABASE_URL']
end
As you can see I'd like to enable two modes of initialization. Either through the ENV['DATABASE_URL'] variable or through a constructor. What I'd like to do now is replace #db with DB. Any ideas?

You can just kick that out of the module context if you want:
DB = BB::Dal.connect(ENV['DATABASE_URL']) if ENV['DATABASE_URL']
It's worth noting that jamming these things in the root namespace is probably bad form. You might want to have a database connection module to organize these:
module DB
def connection
# Lazy initializer pattern applied here
#connection ||= BB::Dal.connect(ENV['DATABASE_URL'])
end
end
# ...
# Will connect the first time it's called, recycle the connection
# for all subsequent calls.
DB.connection.do_stuff
It really depends on how this will be used. The advantage of a method is it's very easy to upgrade to a connection pool should the occasion arise, whereas a constant is very rigid in terms of function, it must return a singular value with no opportunity to run code first.

Related

Nesting modules in classes and directly calling module functions

For testing and administration purposes I am looking to build a class to communicate with an API. I've got the connection and authentication down but am struggling with the base structure and size of the class.
My main goal is to keep each application domain split, but still easy to access by one class/connection.
I've made an simpler example of what I'm looking for. In reality each domain has its own set of business rules to follow, which is why I want to keep them separate, whilst the API connection stays the same.
For instance, on CLI level I want to invoke:
$ client_one = Api.new("one")
$ client_two = Api.new("two")
$ client_one.Bikes.delete(1)
> deleted bike 1 from one
$ client_two.Phones.new(phone)
> posted phone iPhone to two
My thought proces was to nest modules inside an Api class but I can't get it to work or find the right syntax.
class Api
def initialize(client)
#client = client
#connection = Authentication.get_connection(#client)
end
#preferable put each submodule in a separate file
module Authentication
def get_connection(client)
#code to get Faraday connection
end
end
module Bikes
def new(object)
#code to post new bike
#connection.post(object)
puts "posted bike #{object.name} to #{#client}"
end
def delete(id)
#code to delete old bike
#connection.delete(id)
puts "deleted bike #{id} from #{#client}"
end
end
module Phones
def new(object)
#code to post new phone
#connection.post(object)
puts "posted phone #{object.name} to #{#client}"
end
end
end
This results in errors like:
NoMethodError: undefined method `Bikes' for #<Api:0x0000000003a543a0>
Is it possible to achieve my goal or are there better 'Ruby' ways to accomplish it?
Furthermore, is it possible to split the submodules to different files? eg:
api.rb
modules
+ -- authentication.rb
+ -- bikes.rb
+ -- phones.rb
There are some fundamental misconceptions of how Ruby OOP works in your example, and without a full code sample and the opportunity to interrogate you about what you're trying to accomplish it's hard to guide you to what might be the most appropriate answer. Any answer I give will be based partly on experience and partly on opinion, so you may see other answers as well.
At a high level, you should have classes in modules and not modules in classes. Although you can put modules in classes you better have a good understanding of why you're doing that before doing it.
Next, the modules and methods you've defined in them do not automatically become accessible to instances of the parent class, so client.Bikes will never work because Ruby expects to find an instance method named Bikes inside the Api class; it won't look for a module with that name.
The only way to access the modules and module methods that you have defined is to use them at the class/module level. So if you have this:
class Foo
module Bar
def baz
puts 'foobarbaz'
end
end
end
You can do this at the class/module level:
Foo::Bar.baz
foobarbaz
=> nil
But you can't do anything at the instance level:
Foo.new::Bar.baz
TypeError: #<Foo:0x00007fa037d39260> is not a class/module
Foo.new.Bar.baz
NoMethodError: undefined method `Bar' for #<Foo:0x00007fa037162e28>
So if you understand so far why the structure of your example doesn't work, then you can work on building something a little more sensible. Let's start with naming and the class/module structure.
First, Api is a poor name here because you'll typically use Api for something that provides an API, not connects to one, so I would recommend making the name a bit more descriptive and using a module to indicate that you are encapsulating one or more related classes:
module MonthyApiClient
end
Next, I'd recommend adding a Client class to encapsulate everything related to instantiating a client used to connect to the API:
module MonthyApiClient
class Client
def initialize
#client = nil # insert your logic here
#connection = nil # insert your logic here
end
end
end
The relationship between client and connection in your code example isn't clear, so for simplicity I am going to pretend that they can be combined into a single class (Client) and that we are dropping the module Authentication entirely.
Next, we need a reasonable way to integrate module Bikes and module Phones into this code. It doesn't make sense to convert these to classes because there's no need to instantiate them. These are purely helper functions that do something for an instance of Client, so they should be instance methods within that class:
module MonthyApiClient
class Client
def initialize
# insert your logic here
#client = nil
#connection = nil
end
def create_bike
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.post(something)
end
def delete_bike
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.delete(something)
end
def create_phone
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.post(something)
end
end
end
Note that we've swapped new for create; you don't want to name a method new in Ruby, and in the context we're using this new would mean instantiate but do not save a new object whereas create would mean instantiate and save a new object.
And now that we're here, and now that we've eliminated all the nested modules by moving their logic elsewhere, we can see that the parent module we set up originally is unnecessarily redundant, and can eliminate it:
class MonthyApiClient
def initialize
# insert your logic here
#client = nil
#connection = nil
end
def create_bike
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.post(something)
end
def delete_bike
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.delete(something)
end
def create_phone
# insert your logic here
# e.g., #connection.post(something)
end
end
Then you can accomplish your original goal:
client_one = MonthyApiClient.new
client_one.create_bike
client_two = MonthyApiClient.new
client_two.create_phone
Having worked through this explanation, I think your original code is an example of spending a lot of time trying to over-optimize prematurely. It's better to plan out your business logic and make it as simple as possible first. There's some good information at https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/80094 that may help explain this concept.
I've even skipped trying to optimize the code I've shown here because I don't know exactly how much commonality there is between creating and deleting bikes and phones. With this functional class, and with a better understanding of other code within this app, I might try to DRY it up (and that might mean going back to having a module with a Client class and either module methods or other classes to encapsulate the DRY logic), but it would be premature to try.
Your last question was about how to structure files and directories for modules and classes, and I would refer you to Ideal ruby project structure (among many other questions on this site) for more information.

Creating facade idiomatically in Ruby

I'm trying to implement a Facade in idiomatic Ruby while coming from Java. I can see that Rails' ActiveRecord is fond of using class methods for things like find_by(criteria) and does not use Repository pattern for that task.
My Facade wraps a specific webservice with several methods. My original idea was to make it's API similar to ActiveRecord (learning by imitation):
class MyEntity
# ....
def get_name
#loaded_name + #loaded_surname
end
def delete
#entity_access_service.delete(#id)
end
def save
#entity_access_service.save(#id, #loaded_name , #loaded_surname)
end
def self.find(id)
data = #entity_access_service.get_data_for(id)
MyEntity.new(data) #Or whatever way to populate my entity
end
end
This, in theory, would work great:
e = MyEntity.find(10)
p e.get_name
e.delete
Or:
e = MyEntity.new(some stuff)
e.save
Question:
For save and delete instance methods to work, I need to somehow get an instance of EntityAccessService. This instance should be mockable to test it in isolated environment. What is the correct way to do it?
I'm expecting my tests to look as simple as possible and without some weird hacks, as what I'm trying to implement seems fairly trivial.
I have thought of several options to do that:
Having a class-level variable holding entity_access_service used by all of the entities created in application. In this case, where should I initialize this field? For example:
class MyEntity
##entity_access_service = nil
end
# Somewhere else (where?):
MyEntity.entity_access_service = MyEntityService.new(some_params_from_env)
This way, in my tests I would have to initialize/mock it at start.
Similar to 1 but initialize it in the class. This looks weird, especially if I know that my tests do not have required ENV params populated at all.
Have an extra constructor/attribute to set the entity_service. This won't work, as save would not have this field initialized.
Create a Repository class. This would work pretty ok, but seems to be not what Ruby people do.
Following ActiveRecord's example, you can create a method on your class itself, or on the base class from which your other classes are derived.
ActiveRecord provides a method ActiveRecord::Base.connection which returns the connection object which all models use to access the database. You can do something similar:
class MyEntity
....
def self.entity_access_service
# return your service object
end
def self.find(id)
MyEntity.entity_access_service.get_data_for(id)
MyEntity.new(data) # Or whatever way to populate my entity
end
def save()
MyEntity.entity_access_service.save(#id, #loadedName, #loadedSurname)
end
end
As far as initialization goes, you either have to have a initialization step in your app (and test suite) where service credentials are read from config files and passed into your MyEntity object, or your entity_access_service method can lazily create the object it returns on first access using a very common Ruby idiom:
def self.entity_access_service
#entity_access_service || = # build entity_access_service object
end
Note that, by wrapping your class-level instance variables in class-level accessor methods, you can avoid the use of ## which is a recommended best practice.

Add globals at startup and shutdown with Sinatra? [duplicate]

I have built a pretty simple REST service in Sinatra, on Rack. It's backed by 3 Tokyo Cabinet/Table datastores, which have connections that need to be opened and closed. I have two model classes written in straight Ruby that currently simply connect, get or put what they need, and then disconnect. Obviously, this isn't going to work long-term.
I also have some Rack middleware like Warden that rely on these model classes.
What's the best way to manage opening and closing the connections? Rack doesn't provide startup/shutdown hooks as I'm aware. I thought about inserting a piece of middleware that provides reference to the TC/TT object in env, but then I'd have to pipe that through Sinatra to the models, which doesn't seem efficient either; and that would only get be a per-request connection to TC. I'd imagine that per-server-instance-lifecycle would be a more appropriate lifespan.
Thanks!
Have you considered using Sinatra's configure blocks to set up your connections?
configure do
Connection.initialize_for_development
end
configure :production do
Connection.initialize_for_production
end
That's a pretty common idiom while using things like DataMapper with Sinatra
Check out the "Configuration" section at http://www.sinatrarb.com/intro
If you have other Rack middleware that depend on these connections (by way of a dependence on your model classes), then I wouldn't put the connection logic in Sinatra -- what happens if you rip out Sinatra and put in another endpoint?
Since you want connection-per-application rather than connection-per-request, you could easily write a middleware that initialized and cleaned up connections (sort of the Guard Idiom as applied to Rack) and install it ahead of any other middleware that need the connections.
class TokyoCabinetConnectionManagerMiddleware
class <<self
attr_accessor :connection
end
def initialize(app)
#app = app
end
def call(env)
open_connection_if_necessary!
#app.call(env)
end
protected
def open_connection_if_necessary!
self.class.connection ||= begin
... initialize the connection ..
add_finalizer_hook!
end
end
def add_finalizer_hook!
at_exit do
begin
TokyoCabinetConnectionManagerMiddleware.connection.close!
rescue WhateverTokyoCabinetCanRaise => e
puts "Error closing Tokyo Cabinet connection. You might have to clean up manually."
end
end
end
end
If you later decide you want connection-per-thread or connection-per-request, you can change this middleware to put the connection in the env Hash, but you'll need to change your models as well. Perhaps this middleware could set a connection variable in each model class instead of storing it internally? In that case, you might want to do more checking about the state of the connection in the at_exit hook because another thread/request might have closed it.

ActiveRecord 3.1.0 multiple databases

I'm trying to upgrade the ActiveRecord gem to the latest 3.1.0 release and seeing a lot of exceptions being raised, I think it's due to how we handle multiple databases.
For each of our databases we specify a separate base class which inherits from ActiveRecord::Base, and call establish_connection in there. There are no cross-database relations. This has worked fine for us up until now.
Having upgraded to ActiveRecord 3.1.0 I'm seeing that it fails with an ActiveRecord::ConnectionNotEstablished exception, when traversing relations (i.e. it will successfully pull a single entity or set of them from the DB, but fails when navigating to a related class).
The top line of the backtrace is C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/activerecord-3.1.0/lib/active_record/connection_adapters/abstract/connection_pool.rb:410:in 'retrieve_connection', so I dug into this a little. The method is defined as follows:
def retrieve_connection(klass) #:nodoc:
pool = retrieve_connection_pool(klass)
(pool && pool.connection) or raise ConnectionNotEstablished
end
My simple test (puts Customer.first.address) calls retrieve_connection 3 times. Twice with Customer as the klass parameter, and once with ActiveRecord::Base as the parameter - which is when it fails as establish_connection has not been called for ActiveRecord::Base.
To the actual question then - is there a new recommended way of handling multiple database connections in ActiveRecord? If so, what is it?
If not, what could be causing this problem?
I ran into the same issue yesterday while upgrading to ActiveRecord 3.1.0. I can't speak to whether there is a new recommended way of handling multiple database connections in ActiveRecord 3.1, but I did find a way to unblock myself.
It appears a connection must now be established on ActiveRecord::Base in order for it to determine the table name lengths/rules of the adapter. Along with the rest of my connections established in my database initializer, I now also have an ActiveRecord::Base connection established to one of my DBs (it doesn't matter which one).
I'd like to think there's a better solution to be found, but I'm happy to be unblocked for now.
I am using this solution - What I was seeing was that when establish_connection was called in each of the OtherDb classes - there seemed to be alot of overhead reloading table definitions and I would randomly see issues every time the class def was reloaded.
# The idea here is to specify that a given model should use another
# database without having to change the entire inheritance hierarchy
# declare model for table in primary connection
class Bar < ActiveRecord::Base
# assume we have logic here that we don't want to refactor into a module
# but we do want to inherit in OtherDb::Bar
end
module Foo
# base model in Foo namespace - uses another db
class BaseConnection < ActiveRecord::Base
# OtherDb::Title.database contains a db config hash
# This would probably go in the initializers
establish_connection OtherDb::Title.database
end
# module used to override db connection
module OtherDb::Base
def retrieve_connection
# connection_handler.retrieve_connection(self) # normal behavior
connection_handler.retrieve_connection(Foo::BaseConnection) # use db from Foo::BaseConnection
end
end
# Foo::Bar is identical to ::Bar but is in another db
class Bar < ::Bar
extend OtherDb::Base
end
end

Ruby Rack: startup and teardown operations (Tokyo Cabinet connection)

I have built a pretty simple REST service in Sinatra, on Rack. It's backed by 3 Tokyo Cabinet/Table datastores, which have connections that need to be opened and closed. I have two model classes written in straight Ruby that currently simply connect, get or put what they need, and then disconnect. Obviously, this isn't going to work long-term.
I also have some Rack middleware like Warden that rely on these model classes.
What's the best way to manage opening and closing the connections? Rack doesn't provide startup/shutdown hooks as I'm aware. I thought about inserting a piece of middleware that provides reference to the TC/TT object in env, but then I'd have to pipe that through Sinatra to the models, which doesn't seem efficient either; and that would only get be a per-request connection to TC. I'd imagine that per-server-instance-lifecycle would be a more appropriate lifespan.
Thanks!
Have you considered using Sinatra's configure blocks to set up your connections?
configure do
Connection.initialize_for_development
end
configure :production do
Connection.initialize_for_production
end
That's a pretty common idiom while using things like DataMapper with Sinatra
Check out the "Configuration" section at http://www.sinatrarb.com/intro
If you have other Rack middleware that depend on these connections (by way of a dependence on your model classes), then I wouldn't put the connection logic in Sinatra -- what happens if you rip out Sinatra and put in another endpoint?
Since you want connection-per-application rather than connection-per-request, you could easily write a middleware that initialized and cleaned up connections (sort of the Guard Idiom as applied to Rack) and install it ahead of any other middleware that need the connections.
class TokyoCabinetConnectionManagerMiddleware
class <<self
attr_accessor :connection
end
def initialize(app)
#app = app
end
def call(env)
open_connection_if_necessary!
#app.call(env)
end
protected
def open_connection_if_necessary!
self.class.connection ||= begin
... initialize the connection ..
add_finalizer_hook!
end
end
def add_finalizer_hook!
at_exit do
begin
TokyoCabinetConnectionManagerMiddleware.connection.close!
rescue WhateverTokyoCabinetCanRaise => e
puts "Error closing Tokyo Cabinet connection. You might have to clean up manually."
end
end
end
end
If you later decide you want connection-per-thread or connection-per-request, you can change this middleware to put the connection in the env Hash, but you'll need to change your models as well. Perhaps this middleware could set a connection variable in each model class instead of storing it internally? In that case, you might want to do more checking about the state of the connection in the at_exit hook because another thread/request might have closed it.

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