What if you don't want your model to be from Active Record?

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hello Everyone,

What if you don’t want your model to be tied to a database therefore not ActiveRecord, where do you put that model instead?

I want to write a class that would wrap together the various functions from, let’s say, the AWS API. Would I write that class and place it in the models directory? Or should I place it elsewhere? Thank you.

Peter

2

What if you don't want your model to be tied to a database therefore not ActiveRecord, where do you put that model instead?

In models, because nobody said models had to be ActiveRecord because models define behaviors but if you want the Railism that "models should be ActiveRecord" kicked out of your models you should upgrade to Rails 4 where now you can have ActiveRecord::Base and ActiveModel::Model.

I want to write a class that would wrap together the various functions from, let's say, the AWS API. Would I write that class and place it in the models directory? Or should I place it elsewhere? Thank you.

It depends on what you mean but "wrap together various functions".

3

By “wrap together”, I meant I would write a single function for all the functions I would use from the AWS API.

So, I should put this in the models directory, right? I want the controller to remain a “controller” with respect to rails-isms.

class MyAWSAPI

def list_servers

… call to AWS API to get list of servers…

end

def show_server(int)

… call to AWS API to get info on server int …

end

end

4

Peter wrote in post #1124413:

By "wrap together", I meant I would write a single function for all the functions I would use from the AWS API.

So, I should put this in the models directory, right? I want the controller to remain a "controller" with respect to rails-isms.

class MyAWSAPI   def list_servers     ... call to AWS API to get list of servers...   end

  def show_server(int)     ... call to AWS API to get info on server int ...   end end

Yes, that would be a model object and models would be a good place to put that. You might even consider implementing ActiveModel with your class and gain some ActiveRecord like behavior, but not actually be an ActiveRecord subclass. Depends on your needs.