Hi all,
I've been playing around with Arel this week (actually outside of Rails) and found an issue with the clone implementation. I've added a patch and a testcase here:
https://github.com/codders/arel/commit/660f706491ac012cb133554cffeaa6b9ae6046e9
and made a pull request against the rails/arel repo.
I've also been playing around with support for ordering on Expressions (e.g. ORDER BY COUNT(DISTINCT blah) DESC):
https://github.com/codders/arel/commit/10a9fe64b87579592307ffbc3b18bf69c5bcf15c
and even more experimentally, with adding placeholders to allow a query to be evaluated multiple times in different dynamic contexts:
https://github.com/codders/arel/commit/4b9ae3de9edee084303e6f29145b0e4ce5e04481
So... a) How can I get my bugfix merged - who should I talk to, what else do you need?
b) What's the best forum for discussing / getting involved in Arel development.
Thanks,
Arthur
Update - That got merged (thanks!). So only the one question.
Arthur
Update - That got merged (thanks!). So only the one question.
Arthur
>Hi all,
>
>I've been playing around with Arel this week (actually outside of
>Rails) and found an issue with the clone implementation. I've
>added a patch and a testcase here:
>
>Fixed deep copy bug in SelectManager clone · codders/arel@660f706 · GitHub
>
>
>and made a pull request against the rails/arel repo.
>
>I've also been playing around with support for ordering on
>Expressions (e.g. ORDER BY COUNT(DISTINCT blah) DESC):
>
>Add support for ordering on expressions · codders/arel@10a9fe6 · GitHub
>
>
>and even more experimentally, with adding placeholders to allow a
>query to be evaluated multiple times in different dynamic
>contexts:
>
>Added support for late-evaluated values in queries · codders/arel@4b9ae3d · GitHub
There are no tests for this, so I'm not sure what it actually does.
Is "placeholder" in the SQL BNF?
>So... a) How can I get my bugfix merged - who should I talk to,
>what else do you need?
>b) What's the best forum for discussing / getting involved in Arel
>development.
For now, we should discuss here. I'll open a mailing list soon, and we
can move there eventually. 
Tests. Yes
and even more experimentally, with adding placeholders to allow a
query to be evaluated multiple times in different dynamic
contexts:
Added support for late-evaluated values in queries · codders/arel@4b9ae3d · GitHub
There are no tests for this, so I'm not sure what it actually does.
Is "placeholder" in the SQL BNF?
No, I don't imagine so. The idea with the placeholders is that you could have one query which serializes differently to SQL (or through any of the visitors) depending on the dynamic value of the placeholders. The effect I want (and am using in my local repo) is not to have to define the values of all the query terms at query build time:
@placeholders = { :username => "bob" }
query = @users.project(@users[:id]).where(@users[:name].eq(Arel::Nodes::Placeholder.new(:username, @placeholders)))
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name` = 'bob'"
@placeholders[:username] = "adam"
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name` = 'adam'"
Make sense? Sound useful? I'm not sure that's the most elegant API in the world (in fact I'm pretty sure it's not), but I'm open to suggestions as to pretty ways to achieve the same thing.
So... a) How can I get my bugfix merged - who should I talk to,
what else do you need?
b) What's the best forum for discussing / getting involved in Arel
development.
For now, we should discuss here. I'll open a mailing list soon, and we
can move there eventually.
Okidoke
Aaron, all,
Did anyone have any strong feelings about the following feature - is it
something that it's going to be possible to get included (possibly in a
prettied up form), or am I better forking / monkey-patching?
The idea with the placeholders is that you could have one query which
serializes differently to SQL (or through any of the visitors)
depending on the dynamic value of the placeholders. The effect I want
(and am using in my local repo) is not to have to define the values of
all the query terms at query build time:
@placeholders = { :username => "bob" }
query =
@users.project(@users[:id]).where(@users[:name].eq(Arel::Nodes::Placeholder.new(:username,
@placeholders)))
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE
`users`.`name` = 'bob'"
@placeholders[:username] = "adam"
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name`
= 'adam'"
Make sense? Sound useful? I'm not sure that's the most elegant API in
the world (in fact I'm pretty sure it's not), but I'm open to
suggestions as to pretty ways to achieve the same thing.
The other design I considered would be:
@placeholders = Arel::Placeholders.new(:username => "bob")
query =
@users.project(@users[:id]).where(@users[:name].eq(@placeholders.for_key(:username)))
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name`
= 'bob'"
@placeholders.update(:username => "adam")
query.to_sql => "SELECT `users`.`id` FROM `users` WHERE `users`.`name` =
'adam'"
which seems a little more elegant.
Thanks,
Arthur
I don’t see that the use case is that compelling for the majority of Rails apps.
Oh, there isn't. The question is really whether the current Arel library
is still useful as a standalone library (could be made useful without
too much bloat) or whether Arel-standalone should be developed separately.
Arthur
Hello,
Arel is a Relational Algebra for Ruby and if I can recall correctly at the moment it uses ActiveRecord’s connection adapters. It would be useful to make it standalone but since it’s quite dependent on Rails, any unconvincing use-cases for Rails app will never be appreciated. In that case, making it independent of Rails sounds like the first logical step.
Please give your opinion.
Anuj
@andhapp
No, I don't want to include this in ARel. ARel manages an SQL AST.
Since "Placeholder" isn't part of SQL, I don't want to support it.
But that doesn't mean you can't subclass the visitor and add it, or
monkeypatch the ToSql visitor and add support. I certainly won't break
that.
Understood. Bit of a shame, but I can understand the point of keeping it pure. I'll create a separate Gem that wraps / extends Arel and includes the additional functionality.
Thanks,
Arthur
Hi again
I've also been playing around with support for ordering on
Expressions (e.g. ORDER BY COUNT(DISTINCT blah) DESC):
Add support for ordering on expressions · codders/arel@10a9fe6 · GitHub
This is, I'm pretty sure, allowed in the SQL-99 BNF. Would it be possible to get that merged?
Thanks,
Arthur
Yup! Seems good to me. I'll merge it.