Scoped databases need explanation

Rails
1

Could someone explain this

http://blog.leetsoft.com/articles/2005/10/31/scoped-databases

in a way that can be understood with an example if possible. Tobi Lutke
has started to explain but it does not make any sense.

“Since rails 0.13.1 we support calling class methods over associations.”
what?? give an example.

also

“The Shop object is figured out at the beginning of each request by
looking at the incoming domain of the user.” has no example of how it
could be used.

I feel this is a very important aspect to rails that needs some futher
explanation.

2

On Feb 18, 2006, at 12:27 PM, James W. wrote:

what?? give an example.

also

“The Shop object is figured out at the beginning of each request by
looking at the incoming domain of the user.” has no example of how it
could be used.

I feel this is a very important aspect to rails that needs some futher
explanation.

What they are probably doing is getting the shop in a before_filter

using the subdomain. Something like this:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

before_filter :setup_shop

attr_accessor:shop

protected

def setup_shop
  if @shop = Shop.find_by_subdomain(request.subdomains.first)
  else
    @shop = Shop.find_by_subdomain("default")
  end
end

end

This way on every request @shop will be set the the correct shop
according to the subdomain in the url like:

http://fooshop.example.com

So @shop will be the current shop account on every request and if the
request doesn’t have a subdomain it gets set tho the default shop.
Then you can scope your queries like in the blog article:

class Product < AR:B
def self.search(q)
find(:all, :conditions => “title LIKE ‘%#{q}%’”)
end
end

@shop.products.search(â??snowboardsâ?) will run this find query:

Product.find(:all, :conditions => [“title LIKE ? AND shop_id = ?”, “%#
{q}%”, 2]

The shop_id = 2 is added automatically by these scoped queries. So in
the above @shop.id would be 2 and the Product search is scoped to
that particular shop.

Hope that makes sense to you :wink:

Cheers-

-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732

3

That is brilliant and now makes sense to me thanks.

Just one thing, how can I set the subdomains up for each new account on
the system. Is that done within rails or is it a server setup?

Basically I have a table called “customers” and for each new customer I
would like to map their name to a subdomain just like the other hosted
apps out there.

4

On Feb 19, 2006, at 6:01 AM, James W. wrote:

James-

Well you need to configure your web server and dns to accept any

subdomain. And then you can just store the customers subdomain in the
Customer model and use the technique I just showed you. There are
also some good helpers for using subdomains and redirecting to them
here:

module AccountLocation
def self.included(controller)
controller.helper_method
(:account_domain, :account_host, :account_url)
end

protected
def default_account_subdomain
@account.company_abbrev if @account && @account.respond_to?
(:company_abbrev)
end

 def account_url(account_subdomain = default_account_subdomain,

use_ssl = request.ssl?)
(use_ssl ? “https://” : “http://”) + account_host
(account_subdomain)
end

 def account_host(account_subdomain = default_account_subdomain)
   account_host = ""
   account_host << account_subdomain + "."
   account_host << account_domain
 end

 def account_domain
   account_domain = ""
   account_domain << request.subdomains[1..-1].join(".") + "." if

request.subdomains.size > 1
account_domain << request.domain + request.port_string
end
end

Inlcude that in your application controller like so:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
include AccountLocation

Cheers-

-Ezra Z.
WebMaster
Yakima Herald-Republic Newspaper
[email protected]
509-577-7732