ever tried to destroy/delete tens of millions of rows at once?  w/ rails it sucks, this tries to make it better

class Shredder < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :beers
end

The default is 500 rows at a time, feel free to change it.

Shredder.destroy_amount = 2000 # woah, easy


Now your regular rails destroy methods will only destroy/delete destroy_amount at a time.

Shredder.destroy_all # instantiates x at a time, destroys one a time (no more instantiating the entire table ZOMG)

Shredder.delete_all # just deletes x at a time straight w/ SQL, this way you won't lock up the db with your giant 
locking query (what a jerk)


and in case you use acts_as_paranoid, it works with that too (destroy_all!)

last thing, it works on associations too, like so:

shredder = Shredder.find(:first)
shredder.beers.destroy_all # this is what shredders do


And it works on your :dependent => :destroy associations too.


SHRED!