Issues with catenating the results of two queries + will_paginate

(Rails 4, Ruby 2)

I have two functions which query the database. Both yield a set of model objects. These two sets should be catenated and presented to the user using the will_paginate Gem. I think I understand now how to do it, but a few issues with this are still puzzling me.

Here are the query functions:

  def the_other_dicts_of_same_user(d)     User.find_by_id(d.user_id).dicts.where("id != #{d.id}")   end

  def public_dicts_of_other_users(d)     Dict.where("user_id != #{d.user_id} and world_readable")   end

Both yield a series of Dict objects. The result of the first query is of type Dict::ActiveRecord_AssociationRelation and the result of the second query is of type Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation

I guess I get different data types here, because I start with User in the first case and with Dict in the second case.

As a side note: I *could* have written the first query alternatively as

   Dict.where("user_id = #{d.user_id} and id != #{d.user_id}")

Would this be better?

Anyway, I catenate the results,

   @dicts=the_other_dicts_of_same_user(d)+public_dicts_of_other_users(d)

which yields again a Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation . Now I apply pagination:

  @dicts=@dicts.paginate(....)

This yields the error message, that paginate is not defined for objects of type Array.

I was able to get around this error, by doing a

  require 'will_paginate/array'

as a first line in my controller, but I wonder: Why do I get this error? @dicts is NOT an array (I logged @dicts.class.to_s to be sure of this), and I would have expected to work it in a ActiveRecord_Relation.

Could someone please kindly explain this observed behaviour to me?

(Rails 4, Ruby 2)

I have two functions which query the database. Both yield a set of model objects. These two sets should be catenated and presented to the user using the will_paginate Gem. I think I understand now how to do it, but a few issues with this are still puzzling me.

Here are the query functions:

def the_other_dicts_of_same_user(d)    User.find_by_id(d.user_id).dicts.where("id != #{d.id}") end

def public_dicts_of_other_users(d)    Dict.where("user_id != #{d.user_id} and world_readable") end

Both yield a series of Dict objects. The result of the first query is of type Dict::ActiveRecord_AssociationRelation and the result of the second query is of type Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation

I guess I get different data types here, because I start with User in the first case and with Dict in the second case.

As a side note: I *could* have written the first query alternatively as

  Dict.where("user_id = #{d.user_id} and id != #{d.user_id}")

Would this be better?

Anyway, I catenate the results,

  @dicts=the_other_dicts_of_same_user(d)+public_dicts_of_other_users(d)

which yields again a Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation . Now I apply pagination:

@dicts=@dicts.paginate(....)

This yields the error message, that paginate is not defined for objects of type Array.

I was able to get around this error, by doing a

require 'will_paginate/array'

as a first line in my controller, but I wonder: Why do I get this error? @dicts is NOT an array (I logged @dicts.class.to_s to be sure of this), and I would have expected to work it in a ActiveRecord_Relation.

Could someone please kindly explain this observed behaviour to me?

I suspect that it is because a Relation is not an Array, it's more of a scope. It can be iterated over, because it extends Enumerable, but that does not make it an array. But adding the two together must (I am guessing here) cause them to both be evaluated as arrays before the addition can succeed. When you do to_a on a Relation (either kind) it loses its magic lazy-loading behavior, and the elements are found and placed into the array. The whole point of a Relation is that the found records inside it are not loaded into memory until they are actually asked for more formally. This makes it much faster (and allows for further chaining) in a scope.

Walter

Would it be possible to combine the two queries into one - Dict.where( ... or ... )? Then you would not need to concatenate them.

Colin

Walter Davis wrote in post #1155317:

But adding the two together must (I am guessing here) cause them to both be evaluated as arrays before the addition can succeed.

I don't think this is the case. As I said, I also logged the object AFTER adding them together, and it still is a Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation. The conversion into an Array must come after that, and this means it must happen inside paginate().

Ronald

Colin Law wrote in post #1155319:

Walter Davis wrote in post #1155317:

But adding the two together must (I am guessing here) cause them to both be evaluated as arrays before the addition can succeed.

I don't think this is the case. As I said, I also logged the object AFTER adding them together, and it still is a Dict::ActiveRecord_Relation. The conversion into an Array must come after that, and this means it must happen inside paginate().

Is it possible that you are getting this:

[ ActiveRecord_Relation, ActiveRecord_AssociationRelation ]

(an array of the outermost objects) rather than this:

[ #Record 1, #Record 2, ... ]

when it gets to pagination?

Walter

Walter Davis wrote in post #1155322:

Actually, you can build the relations separately, and then combine them with .or, before accessing rows of the result. So you probably do not have get code duplication from that approach.