Rails Models Cheat Sheet

Reference

• Rails Models Cheat Sheet
• Cheat Sheet Maker

Overriding accessors

class Song < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Uses an integer of seconds to hold the length of the song

  def length=(minutes)
    write_attribute(:length, minutes.to_i * 60)
  end

  def length
    read_attribute(:length) / 60
  end
end

See: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html

Callbacks

• after_create
• after_initialize
• after_validation
• after_save
• after_commit### Serialize

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize :preferences
end

user = User.create(
  preferences: {
    'background' => 'black',
    'display' => 'large'
  }
)

You can also specify a class option as the second parameter that’ll raise an exception if a serialized object is retrieved as a descendant of a class not in the hierarchy.

# Only Hash allowed!
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  serialize :preferences, Hash
end

# Reading it raises SerializationTypeMismatch
user = User.create(preferences: %w(one two three))
User.find(user.id).preferences

Other tricks### Where interpolation

where('name = ?', 'John')
where(['name = :name', { name: 'John' }])

Joining

# Basic joins
Student.joins(:schools).where(schools: { type: 'public' })
Student.joins(:schools).where('schools.type' => 'public' )

# Multiple associations
Article.joins(:category, :comments)

# Nested associations
Article.joins(comments: :guest)

# SQL
Author.joins(
  'INNER JOIN posts ' +
  'ON posts.author_id = authors.id ' +
  'AND posts.published = "t"'
)

Mass updates

# Updates person id 15
Person.update 15, name: "John", age: 24
Person.update [1,2], [{name: "John"}, {name: "foo"}]

Callbacks

• Guides: callbacks ### Errors

record.errors.valid?      # → false
record.errors             # → { :name => ["can't be blank"] }
record.errors.messages    # → { :name => ["can't be blank"] }

record.errors[:name].any?

Other API

Custom validations

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  validate :foo_cant_be_nil

  def foo_cant_be_nil
    errors.add(:foo, 'cant be nil')  if foo.nil?
  end
end

Validation

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base

  # Presence
  validates :name,     presence: true

  # Acceptance
  validates :terms,    acceptance: true

  # Confirm
  validates :email,    confirmation: true

  # Unique
  validates :slug,     uniqueness: true
  validates :slug,     uniqueness: { case_sensitive: false }
  validates :holiday,  uniqueness: { scope: :year, message: 'yearly only' }

  # Format
  validates :code,     format: /regex/
  validates :code,     format: { with: /regex/ }

  # Length
  validates :name,     length: { minimum: 2 }
  validates :bio,      length: { maximum: 500 }
  validates :password, length: { in: => 6..20 }
  validates :number,   length: { is: => 6 }

  # Include/exclude
  validates :gender,   inclusion: %w(male female)
  validates :gender,   inclusion: { in: %w(male female) }
  validates :lol,      exclusion: %w(xyz)

  # Numeric
  validates :points,   numericality: true
  validates :played,   numericality: { only_integer: true }
  # ... greater_than, greater_than_or_equal_to,
  # ... less_than, less_than_or_equal_to
  # ... odd, even, equal_to

  # Validate the associated records to ensure they're valid as well
  has_many :books
  validates_associated :books

  # Length (full options)
  validates :content, length: {
    minimum:   300,
    maximum:   400,
    tokenizer: lambda { |str| str.scan(/\w+/) },
    too_short: "must have at least %{count} words",
    too_long:  "must have at most %{count} words" }

  # Multiple
  validates :login, :email, presence: true

  # Conditional
  validates :description, presence: true, if: :published?
  validates :description, presence: true, if: lambda { |obj| .. }

  validates :title, presence: true, on: :save   # :save | :create | :update

end

Polymorphic associations

class Post
  has_many :attachments, as: :parent
end

class Image
  belongs_to :parent, polymorphic: true
end

And in migrations:

create_table :images do |t|
  t.references :post, polymorphic: true
end

Validation