Caching a has_many child's parent

Rails
1

Let’s say we have two models with a plain has_many/belongs_to
relationship.

class Driver
has_one :car
end

class Car
belongs_to :driver
end

The question is this: Why isn’t the car’s parent driver cached when we
eager load it? So the following snippet (as impractical as it is, it’s
just an example) would just result in one hit (as opposed to
ActiveRecord’s current behavior, which hits the db each time that
#driver is called).

@driver = Driver.find(:first, :include => :car)
@driver.car.driver.car.driver.car.driver.car

Is there a reason for the current behavior?

2

On Jan 30, 2008, at 10:54 AM, Rick O. wrote:

class Car

@driver.car # has_one query
exact same ruby object.
So, you can select all the drivers and all the cars for those drivers
map only indexes records by their primary key. There’s a good chance
this plugin will be finding its way into the next release of Rails.

Rick, thanks for this explanation. I’m wondering whether the OP’s
question was more related to the use case:

  • I have a Driver
  • Who has a car
  • And I want to know what drivers also have that car
  • And I want to know all the cars all of those drivers have

Driver.find(:first).car.drivers.cars

Question to OP: Was this actually what you had in mind or did I misread?

3

On Jan 30, 2008 9:32 AM, Pat N. [email protected] wrote:

end
Is there a reason for the current behavior?
Are you using query caching? That should only be maybe 3 queries tops:

Driver.find # eager include query
@car.driver # belongs_to query
@driver.car # has_one query

After that, the queries should be repeating and you won’t hit the
database anymore. Even then, each association call is creating a new
ruby object, even if that query is cached.

I have a plugin that enables a simple identity map for ActiveRecord
within the context of a controller action:
git://activereload.net/active_record_context.git . Every time a
record is fetched from the database, it is stored in a global hash by
ID. Future requests to receive that record will instead receive the
exact same ruby object.

Driver.find 1 # query
Driver.find 1 # ID map
Driver.find 1 # ID map

The cool thing is you can preload from large queries:

Driver.find :all # query
Driver.find 1 # ID map

So, you can select all the drivers and all the cars for those drivers
in a single query:

@drivers = Driver.find :all
Car.find :all, :conditions => {:driver_id => @drivers.collect(&:id)}
@drivers.each do |driver|
driver.car # preloaded in the Car.find query
end

That’s all fine and dandy, but this won’t work for has_one
associations since the query is by driver_id. The plugin’s identity
map only indexes records by their primary key. There’s a good chance
this plugin will be finding its way into the next release of Rails.

–
Rick O.
http://lighthouseapp.com
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com