Eager loading is letting me down

Rails
1

Class User has_many Referrals. Referrals have an instance variable
‘point_value.’ So on my users/index action I want to list the user
info, total referrals, and then total points. However, I am getting the
notorious N+1 problem when running this action.

USERS CONTROLLER
def index
@users = User.find(:all, :include => :referrals)
end

INDEX VIEW
<% for user in @users %>

<%= h user.email %> Referrals: <%= user.referrals.size %> Points: <%= user.total_points %>

USER.RB MODEL
has_many :referrals,
:foreign_key => “referer_id”

def total_points
self.referrals.sum :point_value
end

The index action nails me with a nasty N+2 queries (i have six user
records in the test db):

Processing UsersController#index (for 127.0.0.1 at 2009-01-02 15:49:16)
[GET]
User Load (4.3ms) SELECT * FROM “users”
Referral Load (1.4ms) SELECT “referrals”.* FROM “referrals” WHERE
(“referrals”.referer_id IN (1,2,3,4,6,7))
Rendering template within layouts/users
Rendering users/index
SQL (0.3ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 1)
SQL (0.3ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 2)
SQL (0.3ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 3)
SQL (0.2ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 4)
SQL (0.3ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 6)
SQL (0.3ms) SELECT sum(“referrals”.point_value) AS sum_point_value
FROM “referrals” WHERE (“referrals”.referer_id = 7)

Is this a failing of the rails .sum method to look inside the collection
or am I doing something wrong?

2

Fixed. The short version of the story is that rails’ .sum helper hits
the DB N+1 times. Writing a custom sum method solves this problem. In
my case, the top method only hits the DB twice whereas the second method
hits the DB N+2 times.

2 queries

def total_points
sum = 0
self.referrals.each {|ref| sum += ref.point_value}
sum
end

N+2 queries

def total_points
self.referrals.sum :point_value
end

So :include DOES work as long as you are careful to manipulate the
collection in ruby and not use another ActiveRecord method to do
summation.

3

You probably could have said:

def total_points
self.referrals.to_a.sum(&:point_value)
end

And then #sum is from Enumerable (as extended by ActiveSupport) rather
than ActiveRecord::Calculations::ClassMethods (note the use of .to_a
in there to get a real array rather than an association proxy)

-Rob

On Jan 2, 2009, at 4:07 PM, Taylor S. wrote:

sum = 0
collection in ruby and not use another ActiveRecord method to do
summation.

Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Rob B. http://agileconsultingllc.com
[email protected]
+1 513-295-4739
Skype: rob.biedenharn