Why is Rails ActiveRelation.update_all updating a different set of records?

I've got a weird case of ActiveRecord_Relation magic doing something unintended. Given the following:

comment = Comment.find(params[:id])
# select only the original commenter's comments that match two scenarios
related_comments = comment.where(something: params[:something)
  .union(comment.where(something_else: params[:something_else]))
  .where(user_id: comment.user_id)

related_comments.count
#=> 4
# This is to demonstrate how many records I'm intending to update.
# Using .length would work too, for example's sake.

related_comments.update_all(receive_notifications: true)
#=> SQL (3.9ms)  UPDATE "comments" SET "receive_notifications" = 't'
#=> WHERE "comments"."user_id" = $1  [["user_id", 11]] [sql_query]
#=> 12

From the looks of it, .update_all is running a single SQL query that is updating all comments with a user_id of 11. The .where(user_id: 11) was technically the last query, but shouldn't it be running a SQL query for only the relations of related_comments?

I have a workaround where I could do this, but it would require two SQL queries and seems overly cumbersome than necessary:

comment = Comment.find(params[:id])
# same as above
related_comment_ids = comment.where(something: params[:something)
  .union(comment.where(something_else: params[:something_else]))
  .where(user_id: comment.user_id).pluck(:id)
#=> [12, 14, 17, 18]

Comment.where(id: related_comment_ids).update_all(receive_notifications: true)
#=> SQL (5.7ms)  UPDATE "comments" SET "receive_notifications" = 't'
#=> WHERE "comments"."id" IN (18, 14, 17, 12) [sql_query]
#=> 4

Comments

[rhymes]

You probably hit a limitation of ActiveRecord :-)

union is not part of ActiveRecord, which might be the reason why update_all is not able to work with it.

There's a lot of magic in it :D

PostgreSQL itself is able to update rows from unions if you project the same exact row types from both queries:

PracticalDeveloper_development> select count(*) from comments;
+---------+
| count   |
|---------|
| 30      |
+---------+
PracticalDeveloper_development> update comments set updated_at = now() where id in (select id from comments where id < 10 union select id from comments where id > 15);
UPDATE 24

In conclusion: I don't know what's going on 🧐

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

Haha yeah the magic is certainly mystifying me. Guess I'll put on my wizard robes and dive into the code.

[rhymes]

Let us know if you find anything :D

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

Hmm interesting, I'll give this a try when I get a chance.

Re: what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to combine two Active record queries and then do a third where query to get only the commenter's comments. The final chained query should produce a single SQL query, and then I want to update_all a single collection/relation of records.

The where is called on the ActiveRecord relation and not an individual ActiveRecord record, which is how I can chain the where after doing union.

[Philip Hallstrom]

What is the SQL generated by related_comments.count. Count will change the query sometimes if Rails decides it doesn't need the join/includes. I'm guessing it's dropping your union -- or simply not doing it correctly. And that's what is leading to the difference in rows affected.

edit: however your second solution suggests i'm wrong about that. still, would be curious to see the SQL if you just run the query to select them and for the count.

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

Here's the SQL for related_comments.count:

(22.0ms)  SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ( (SELECT "comments".* FROM "comments"
WHERE (("comments"."ancestry" LIKE '12/%' OR "comments"."ancestry" = '12')
OR "comments"."id" = 12)) UNION (SELECT "comments".* FROM "comments" WHERE
1=0 ORDER BY COALESCE("comments"."ancestry", '') ASC) ) "comments" WHERE
"comments"."user_id" = $1  [["user_id", 11]] [sql_query]

And for the select:

(4.1ms)  SELECT "comments".* FROM ( (SELECT "comments".* FROM "comments"
WHERE (("comments"."ancestry" LIKE '12/%' OR "comments"."ancestry" = '12')
OR "comments"."id" = 12)) UNION (SELECT "comments".* FROM "comments" WHERE
1=0 ORDER BY COALESCE("comments"."ancestry", '') ASC) ) "comments" WHERE
"comments"."user_id" = $1  [["user_id", 11]] [sql_query]

FWIW the code I'm using does not run related_comments.count; that was to demonstrate how many records should be updated.

[Corey Alexander]

I don't know what the magic/issue is with your first example, but I have an idea of how to make your workaround take a single query. I can't seem to get an example like this working with union(and on Rails 5.2 it gives a deprecation warning, about removing the delegation down into AREL) so I can't test this well myself.

But if you do NOT pluck the id, and simply pass a relation into the where clause for id it will do a sub-select for the update. I tried it with a simpler case and got the update_all to use a sub_select. So I think you should be able to do this in one query with:

comment = Comment.find(params[:id])

related_comments = comment.where(something: params[:something)
  .union(comment.where(something_else: params[:something_else]))
  .where(user_id: comment.user_id)


Comment.where(id: related_comments).update_all(receive_notifications: true)

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

Ahh gotcha :) I'll keep note of that for next time!

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

You're totally right about not being able to call .where on comment; the example I used is wrong. I'm actually doing this:

comment.subtree.union(comment.ancestors).where(user_id: comment.user_id)

.subtree and .ancestors are methods from a gem, and I initially thought putting that in the example would be confusing. My workaround-example made it more confusing. 🙃

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

The Ancestry gem. It's what we (dev.to) use for the comment tree.

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

@acflint running .or gives me an error since the built in subtree and ancestors methods have some extra SQL in there. :(

comment.subtree.or(c.ancestors)
#=> ArgumentError: Relation passed to #or must be
#=> structurally compatible. Incompatible values:
#=> [:order, :reordering]

[Ben Halpern]

What happens if you tack .all onto the first related_comments = query?

[Andy Zhao (he/him)]

.update_all still returns 12 :/