[Cross-posted on Ruby on Rails forum]
Welcome! Welcome! Welcome! Ladies and Gentlemen, today you shall be
thrilled and dazzled by wonders of magical mystery.
Dr Nicâ??s Magic Models will now be unveiled to all. Mystery and magic
that you will be able to perform at home.
Within your ActiveRecord models, never again will you need to write:
* validates_presence_of validations
* has_many and belongs_to statements
* has_many :through statements!!
And for the finale, you will be amazed and astounded as you watch
ActiveRecord models appear from nowhere. No class definition, just any
old database tables you have lying around the home is all youâ??ll need to
perform this trick!
No cover charge. No free steak knives. No heavy lifting involved.
Installation, DIY magical instructions, and a world of mystery awaits
you at:
http://magicmodels.rubyforge.org
Dr Nic: http://drnicwilliams.com
on 07.08.2006 22:58
on 07.08.2006 23:04
There's got to be some gotcha :) Stuart
on 07.08.2006 23:05
Stuart Fellowes wrote:
> There's got to be some gotcha :)
Ha. Nope, just an amusing way of releasing code :)
on 07.08.2006 23:13
On 8/7/06, Dr Nic <drnicwilliams@gmail.com> wrote: > Installation, DIY magical instructions, and a world of mystery awaits > you at: > http://magicmodels.rubyforge.org Looks cool. Quick question on install though... why a Gem and not a Rails Plugin? Josh
on 07.08.2006 23:15
> Looks cool. You have a sharp eye. I like that. > Quick question on install though... why a Gem and not a Rails Plugin? Its really a pure extension of ActiveRecords, which can be used outside of Rails. I think adding one line to environment.rb is quicker and easier than installing a plugin too. Cheers Nic
on 08.08.2006 00:52
Dr Nic wrote: > > No cover charge. No free steak knives. No heavy lifting involved. Who is this guy?!
on 08.08.2006 02:52
Bil Kleb wrote: > Dr Nic wrote: >> >> No cover charge. No free steak knives. No heavy lifting involved. > > Who is this guy?! He's Dr. Nic! (http://drnicwilliams.com) Dave
on 08.08.2006 03:01
Question: Is this compatible with your previous work on composite keys for active records? Kev
on 08.08.2006 06:27
Kev Jackson wrote: > Question: Is this compatible with your previous work on composite > keys for active records? Not yet. Currently the Composite Primary Keys solution requires an explicit call to set_primary_keys to activate the code (like a acts_as_... plugin). As long as I can determine from the connection object that 2+ columns have "primary" = true then I should be able to make that call automatically. I'll investigate further. Cheers Nic
on 09.08.2006 02:45
This is awesome. I love this. Magic magic magic. I will migrate my spaceship's control software to Dr. Nic's Magic models now. I'm only missing habtm. Is that planned? There's a Zorg meeting on mars in two weeks, and I need to be there on time.
on 15.08.2006 16:48
Robert MannI wrote: > This is awesome. I love this. Magic magic magic. > > I will migrate my spaceship's control software to Dr. Nic's Magic models > now. > > I'm only missing habtm. Is that planned? There's a Zorg meeting on mars > in > two weeks, and I need to be there on time. I'm not convinced, earth man, that an HABTM association is really useful if you can have a pair of lovely has_many :through's for free instead. Tell your Zorg cohorts that for invasions in the 21st century, you'd be crazy to settle for a HABTM if you didn't need one. I could be wrong - I got 100 out of 200 in year 11 English so the wizards of Australian education certainly got one up on me there - but I think the end result of a has_many :through association will be the same as your run-of-the-mill habtm. Let me know if there's something special about them that I'm missing. Cheers Nic
on 15.08.2006 17:02
On Aug 15, 2006, at 10:48 AM, Dr Nic wrote: >> two weeks, and I need to be there on time. > but I > think the end result of a has_many :through association will be the > same > as your run-of-the-mill habtm. Let me know if there's something > special > about them that I'm missing. > You don't always want a has_many :through though. Sometimes the only thing that exists is the many-to-many relationship. (A person has and belongs to many clubs for instance.)
on 15.08.2006 17:08
Logan Capaldo wrote: > You don't always want a has_many :through though. Sometimes the only > thing that exists is the many-to-many relationship. (A person has and > belongs to many clubs for instance.) Just so I understand, let's play with some tables: people =>* group_people *<= groups The following sequence of commands should work: > person = Person.find_first > groups = person.groups Is that how a HABTM would work too? If so, then to emulate a HABTM, you just need to ignore the join table in your app, and never call peron.group_people, etc. My doubt comes from not having used HABTM since the start of the year; but I think from the object's point of view, the HABTM and the has_many :through behave the same to the Person object if you send it the groups method. Nic
on 16.08.2006 06:10
On Aug 15, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Dr Nic wrote: > > has_many > :through behave the same to the Person object if you send it the > groups > method. > > Nic > > -- > Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. > Yeah they behave the same, but sometimes you don't want the overhead of creating a model just so AR is satisfied ;)
on 16.08.2006 08:38
Logan Capaldo wrote: > On Aug 15, 2006, at 11:09 AM, Dr Nic wrote: > >> >> has_many >> :through behave the same to the Person object if you send it the >> groups >> method. >> >> Nic >> >> -- >> Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. >> > > Yeah they behave the same, but sometimes you don't want the overhead > of creating a model just so AR is satisfied ;) This might just be sacrifice of using the MMs. I'm not sure there's a way to know to create just a HABTM when you might need a has_many :through; the latter being more general and powerful. The triggering logic would be the same. :(
on 16.08.2006 10:07
On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:38 AM, Dr Nic wrote: > This might just be sacrifice of using the MMs. I'm not sure there's a > way to know to create just a HABTM when you might need a has_many > :through; the latter being more general and powerful. The triggering > logic would be the same. Couldn't you just create a habtm if there are no columns in the intermediate tale but the ones with the keys? Does MM support has_one BTW? -- fxn
on 16.08.2006 11:30
Xavier Noria wrote: > On Aug 16, 2006, at 8:38 AM, Dr Nic wrote: > >> This might just be sacrifice of using the MMs. I'm not sure there's a >> way to know to create just a HABTM when you might need a has_many >> :through; the latter being more general and powerful. The triggering >> logic would be the same. > > Couldn't you just create a habtm if there are no columns in the > intermediate tale but the ones with the keys? Does MM support has_one > BTW? It generates a has_one if your method name is singular. E.g. @person.membership - has_one @person.memberships - has_many So much magic in one place! :)
on 16.08.2006 14:14
Dr Nic <drnicwilliams@gmail.com> writes: >> BTW? > > It generates a has_one if your method name is singular. > > E.g. > > @person.membership - has_one > @person.memberships - has_many > > So much magic in one place! :) Whoa, ouch. :-P A very simple and trying-to-be-completely-unmagic-but-clever ORM I've been writing recently makes relationships based on foreign keys. If the field referenced is declared "unique", it will be like has_one, else like has_many. Of course, my system was made for non-legacy and well-specified database schemata.
on 16.08.2006 16:00
Christian Neukirchen wrote: > Dr Nic <drnicwilliams@gmail.com> writes: > >>> BTW? >> >> It generates a has_one if your method name is singular. >> >> E.g. >> >> @person.membership - has_one >> @person.memberships - has_many >> >> So much magic in one place! :) > > Whoa, ouch. :-P That's right, please stand behind the police line. > A very simple and trying-to-be-completely-unmagic-but-clever ORM I've > been writing recently makes relationships based on foreign keys. If > the field referenced is declared "unique", it will be like has_one, > else like has_many. Of course, my system was made for non-legacy and > well-specified database schemata. Cool. I've been working on adding foreign key support (generically, but will require per-vendor extensions) that should be released soon for the MMs. The "unique" idea is interesting. I'll have a think about that one. Cheers Nic