just store the primary key of the record… that’s usually much better
No, it's relatively easy to make sure the 'penalty' is once per page that uses it.
The session is likely a DB hit in any case (ActiveRecordStore), and if you put an entire AR model in it, it makes this session DB hit a monster each and every page.
Storing the ID makes sure that your AR model isn't stale, too.
def current_user @current_user ||= session[:user_id] ? User.find_by_id(session[:user_id]) : nil end
This will cache the the user in @current_user so you can call current_user multiple times during a request and it will only hit the db once.
Cheers- -- Ezra Zygmuntowicz-- Lead Rails Evangelist -- ez@engineyard.com -- Engine Yard, Serious Rails Hosting -- (866) 518-YARD (9273)
This reminds me of something similar, suppose on sign up or in some form the user has to fill in 20 or 30 fields and send them to the server. The server validates them and creates a record on the database. However, suppose that there is some complex logic that needs to validate the form data beyond some simple stuff you could do through javascript, perhaps you could do some sort of AJAX thing, but the other possibility seems to be to store the form fields in the session because the record may not get created on the database if there is a problem, but you don't want the user to have to fill the fields all in again. I did it that way previously before I had done much AJAX, but then I realized the session uses alot of space on the file system.
surf wrote:
This reminds me of something similar, suppose on sign up or in some form the user has to fill in 20 or 30 fields and send them to the server. The server validates them and creates a record on the database. However, suppose that there is some complex logic that needs to validate the form data beyond some simple stuff you could do through javascript, perhaps you could do some sort of AJAX thing, but the other possibility seems to be to store the form fields in the session because the record may not get created on the database if there is a problem, but you don't want the user to have to fill the fields all in again. I did it that way previously before I had done much AJAX, but then I realized the session uses alot of space on the file system.
I would try this:
- database table with a 'committed' boolean - uncommitted records are disposable - committed records are transactable - build a Model out of the table with no validators - inherit a class, Q, from that Model & add validators - paint the form with the Model & submit it - to commit, copy the attributes into an instance of Q - set the committed bit, and try to save
I don't know if each detail there would work, or cause problems. But in general the point of OO is to abstract the thing that varies, so if the validators are the issue you should arrange to move them out of the way, instead of working around them. A user with a partly committed form should be able to return to it.
Don't save the whole object thats the entire point. Just save the objects id in the session. That method will use the id to do a db lookup and then cache the results.
-- Ezra Zygmuntowicz-- Lead Rails Evangelist -- ez@engineyard.com -- Engine Yard, Serious Rails Hosting -- (866) 518-YARD (9273)
Take a look at object_id_session plugin from Yurii Rashkovskii: