Skip to content

Latest commit

 

History

History
149 lines (106 loc) · 5.11 KB

README.mkdn

File metadata and controls

149 lines (106 loc) · 5.11 KB
Raw

Octopus - Easy Database Sharding for ActiveRecord

Octopus is a better way to do Database Sharding in ActiveRecord. Sharding allows multiple databases in the same rails application. While there are several projects that implement Sharding (e.g. DbCharmer, DataFabric, MultiDb), each project has its own limitations. The main goal of octopus project is to provide a nice and clean way of doing Database Sharding.

Feature list:

The design of the api is made to be simple as possible. Octopus is focusing in the end user, giving the power of multiple databases, but with reliable code and flexibility. Octopus is focused on Rails 3, but is compatible with Rails 2.x.

Octopus supports:

  • Sharding (with multiple shards, and grouped shards).
  • Replication (Master/slave support, with multiple slaves).
  • Moving data between shards with migrations.
  • Tools to manage database configurations. (soon)

Replication

When using replication, all writes queries will be sent to master, and read queries to slaves. More info could be found at: Wiki

Sharding

When using sharding, you need to specify what shard the query will be sent. Octopus support selecting the shard inside a controller, or manually in each object. More could be found at Wiki

Install

Rails 2.x

Install the octopus gem:

 sudo gem install ar-octopus

Add this line to enviroment.rb:

config.gem 'ar-octopus', :lib => "octopus"

Rails 3.x

Add this line to Gemfile:

gem 'ar-octopus', :require => "octopus"

Runs a bundle install:

bundle install

How to use Octopus?

First, you need to create a config file, shards.yml, inside your config/ directory. to see the syntax and how this file should look, please checkout this page on wiki.

Syntax

Octopus adds a method to each AR Class and object. the using method is used to select the shard, like this:

User.where(:name => "Thiago").limit(3).using(:slave_one)

Octopus also supports queries inside block. When you pass a block to the using method, all queries inside the block will be sent to the specified shard.

Octopus.using(:slave_two) do 
  User.create(:name => "Mike")
end

Each object knows where is your shard, so you could to thinks like this:

 
# This will find the user in the shard1
@user = User.using(:shard1).find_by_name("Joao")

# This will find the user in the master database
@user2 = User.find_by_name("Jose")

#Sets the name
@user.name = "Mike"

# Save the user in the correct shard, shard1. 
@user.save()

Migrations

In migrations, you also have access to the using method. The syntax is basically the same. This migration will run in brazil and canada shards.

  class CreateUsersOnBothShards < ActiveRecord::Migration
    using(:brazil, :canada)

    def self.up
      User.create!(:name => "Both")
    end

    def self.down
      User.delete_all()
    end
  end

You also could send a migration to a group of shards. This migration will be sent to all shards that belongs to history_shards group, specified in shards.yml:

  class CreateUsersOnMultiplesGroups < ActiveRecord::Migration
    using_group(:history_shards)

    def self.up
      User.create!(:name => "MultipleGroup")
    end

    def self.down
      User.delete_all()
    end
  end

Rails Controllers

If you want to send a specified action, or all actions from a controller, to a specific shard, use this syntax:

  class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
    around_filter :select_shard      
    
    def select_shard
      Octopus.using(:brazil) do
        yield
      end
    end    
  end

To see the complete list of features and syntax, please check out our Wiki Wanna see sample rails applications using octopus features? please check it out: Sharding Example and Replication Example

Contributing with Octopus

Contributors are welcome! To run the test suite, you need mysql, postgresql and sqlite3 installed. In order to install necessary gems, this is what you need to setup your Octopus development environment:

  git clone http://github.com/tchandy/octopus.git
  cd octopus
  bundle install
  rake db:prepare
  rake spec

To run our integrations tests inside sample_app, you need to following commands:

  cd sample_app
  bundle install
  cucumber

If you are having issues with octopus spec suite, check all databases password inside the config files, and make sure that your passwords/permissions are right.

Thanks

This project is sponsored by the Ruby Summer of Code, and my mentors Mike Perham and Amit Agarwal.

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Thiago Pradi, released under the MIT license.