[ANN] Slice and dice plugin

Rails
1

I’ve been playing around with some easier ways of specifying
conditions in active record, and have come up with a little plugin
that some may find useful. Currently active record finder and
calculations methods can take a :conditions option with a string or
array listing some sql conditions, eg:

Animals.find :first, :conditions => “name = ‘Tiger’”

My plugin enables simple conditions like this to be written without
any SQL at all, using a hash instead of an array or string:

Animals.find :first, :conditions => {:name => ‘Tiger’}

As well as simple equality conditions, other tests such as more than,
less than and contains can also be specified:

Animals.find :first, :conditions => {:name_starts_with => ‘Tig’}
Animals.find :all, :conditions => {:population_more_than => 1_000_000}

Conditions can be combined:

endangered_tigers = Animals.find :all, :conditions => {:name_contains
=> ‘Tiger’, :population_less_than => 10_000}

These conditions can also be used in calculations and scoped queries:

Animals.count :conditions => {:population_more_than => 1_000_000}

Animals.with_scope :find => {:conditions => {:name_contains => ‘Tiger’}}
do
Animals.find :all
end

Finally, here’s an simple way to use this plugin to add lots of data
slicing and dicing to any list actions you might have:

class AnimalController < ActiveController
def list
animal_conditions = params.dup.reject! {|k, v| [:action, :control
ler].include? k}
@animals = Animal.find :all, :conditions => animal_conditions
end
end

This allows urls such as
/animal/list?name_starts_with=T&population_less_than=1000

Please take a look, the code is available at
svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/popdog/slice_and_dice/tags/REL-0.1

I’d welcome any comments or ideas on how to improve this (currently
very simple) plugin. I do have some planned extra features of my own,
so watch this space!

Tom

2

On Apr 22, 2006, at 7:24 AM, Tom W. wrote:

Tom

Hey Tom-

Just wanted to point you at my plugin called ez_where:

http://brainspl.at/articles/2006/01/30/i-have-been-busy
http://opensvn.csie.org/ezra/rails/plugins/dev/ez_where/

My plugin solves the same problems that slice and dice does but in a

different way. It allows you to use ruby operators instead of sql ops
and it allows find to take a block to define :conditions. It also
allows for nested sub conditions and stuff like that. Here’s a little
peak at what it can do:

@articles = Article.find_with_block(:all, :include => :author) do |
article, author|
article.title =~ “%Foo Title%”
author.any do
name == ‘Ezra’
name == ‘Fab’
end
end

This will do a find :all with:
:conditions => [“article.title LIKE ? AND
(authors.name = ? OR authors.name = ?)”,
“%Foo Title%”, “Ezra”, “Fab”]

Basically here is the breakdown of how we map ruby operators
to SQL operators:

foo == ‘bar’ #=> [“foo = ?”, ‘bar’]
foo =~ ‘%bar’ #=> [“foo LIKE ?”, ‘%bar’]
foo <=> (1…5) #=> [“foo BETWEEN ? AND ?”, 1, 5]
id === [1, 2, 3, 5, 8] #=> [“id IN(?)”, [1, 2, 3, 5, 8]]
<, >, >=, <= et all will just work like you expect.

There is also the ability to create the conditions in stages so
you can build up a query:

cond = Caboose::EZ::Condition.new do
foo == ‘bar’
baz <=> (1…5)
id === [1, 2, 3, 5, 8]
end

@result = Model.find(:all, :conditions=> cond.to_sql)
#=> [“foo = ? AND baz BETWEEN ? AND ? AND id IN (?)”,
“bar”, 1, 5, [1, 2, 3, 5, 8]]

There is some seriously fun metaprogramming going on in ez_where

that you might want to take a peek at :wink:

Cheers-
-Ezra

PS. the test cases are 700 lines long and serve as the best docs
right now. The tests exercise all the features of the plugin.

3

On Apr 22, 2006, at 2:27 PM, Craig W. wrote:

There is some seriously fun metaprogramming going on in ez_where that

You beat me to the punch as I was about the say the same thing…as
you know, I very much love ez_where and have made good usage of it.

I can’t figure out how to determine with version I have and whether I
should update it, nor can I tell when you update the plugin itself.

Craig

Craig-

ez_where is at revision 85 right now and hasn't changed in about a

month. I am working on an update for it with a few more niceties that
I will roll out soon and I will be sure to let you know.

Cheers-

Ezra

4

That’s really cool, Tom. I love how readable your queries are.

Duane J.
(canadaduane)
http://blog.inquirylabs.com/

5

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 09:12 -0700, Ezra Z. wrote:

I’d welcome any comments or ideas on how to improve this (currently
Hey Tom-

Just wanted to point you at my plugin called ez_where:

Ruby on Rails Blog / What is Ruby on Rails for?
http://opensvn.csie.org/ezra/rails/plugins/dev/ez_where/

now. The tests exercise all the features of the plugin.

You beat me to the punch as I was about the say the same thing…as you
know, I very much love ez_where and have made good usage of it.

I can’t figure out how to determine with version I have and whether I
should update it, nor can I tell when you update the plugin itself.

Craig