Model Inheritance

An attempt at real inheritance for ActiveRecord models.

This gem leverages database views (thanks to Scenic) to compose models from other models, kind of like POROs inheritance with limitations. Views are defined using Arel instead of SQL, which is cleaner and allows for easier integration.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'activerecord-model_inheritance', '~> 1.0'

And then execute:

bundle

Usage

First of all, if you want to make intensive use of this gem, being familiar on how Scenic works is highly recommended.

Quickstart

Assuming you want a new DerivedModel that inherits from a preexisting BaseModel, follow these steps:

• Generate the new model and its view definition:

  rails g active_record:model_inheritance:model DerivedModel BaseModel

• Edit the generated model and definition, if needed

• Generate the SQL definition of the view and the initial migration:

  rails g active_record:model_inheritance:view DerivedModel

• Edit the generated migration if needed

• Finally, run the migration:

  rails db:migrate

Keep in mind that you need to generate a new version of the SQL definition whenever your view definition changes, for example when you want to add some fields to the derived model. To do so, just run the same generator as again:

rails g active_record:model_inheritance:view DerivedModel

This will take care of everything, including generating the migration to update the view. It works similarly to Scenic.

Concepts

A database view is like a virtual table where the schema, as well as the data it contains, are defined by a plain old SQL query. Of course, since views are just query results disguised as tables, you can't write into them. So, at the end of the day, all this gem does is enabling write operations to Scenic view backed models.

To achieve something resembling real inheritance between models, the inner model is introduced, which is a third entity between the base model (the one you want to inherit from) and the derived model (the new one you're creating).

The inner model holds the additional pieces your derived model should have.

When you apply changes to a derived model, those changes are mapped to inner and base models. For example, if the derived model has the fields foo and bar, coming respectively from inner and base models, changes to foo will be saved to the inner model, and changes to bar will be saved to the base model. This way, the database view backing the derived model is always accessed in read-only mode.

Configuration

If you're using Rails, the following is the code you would put inside an initializer to configure this gem as it is configured by default. If you're ok with this defaults, then you don't need to configure anything.

# config/initializers/model_inheritance.rb

ActiveRecord::ModelInheritance.configure do |config|
  ## derived model options
  
  # name of the dynamically generated inner model class
  config.inner_class_name = 'Inner'

  # base class of the dynamically generated inner model
  config.inner_base_class = ApplicationRecord
  
  # name of the belongs_to association from derived model to base model
  config.base_reference_name = :model_inheritance_base

  # name of the belongs_to association from derived model to its own inner model
  config.inner_reference_name = :model_inheritance_inner

  # whether to inherit enums from the base model
  # only enums relevant to inherited fields will be added
  config.inherit_enums = true

  # whether to delegate missing methods from derived model to base model
  config.delegate_missing_to_base = true

  ## paths options

  # these are self explanatory
  config.models_path = Rails.root.join('app/models')
  config.migrations_path = Rails.root.join('db/migrate')

  # where to save generated SQL definitions (Scenic default)
  config.views_path = Rails.root.join('db/views')

  # where to save view definitions
  config.definitions_path = Rails.root.join('db/views/model_inheritance')
end

If you're not using Rails, the default configuration stays the same, except:

config.inner_base_class = ActiveRecord::Base

config.models_path = Pathname('app/models')
config.migrations_path = Pathname('db/migrate')

config.views_path = Pathname('db/views')
config.definitions_path = Pathname('db/views/model_inheritance')

You can pass options to derives_from if you want to override the global derived models configuration on a per model basis:

class DerivedModel < ApplicationRecord
  include ActiveRecord::ModelInheritance::Model
  
  derives_from BaseModel,
               inner_class_name: 'Inner',
               inner_base_class: ApplicationRecord,
               base_reference_name: :model_inheritance_base,
               inner_reference_name: :model_inheritance_inner,
               inherit_enums: true,
               delegate_missing_to_base: true
end

View definitions

A view definition is responsible of:

• providing a convenient way of defining views using Arel
• keeping a map of which attributes belong respectively to the base and inner model

By default, the derived model will get all the fields from base and inner. If that's not what you want, you can override the default behaviour like in the following example:

# db/views/model_inheritance/derived_models.rb

ActiveRecord::ModelInheritance::ViewDefinition.define_derived_view DerivedModel do |inner_table, base_table|
  inner_table
    # all fields from inner
    .project(inner_table[Arel.star])
    # only some fields from base
    .project(
            base_table[:foo],
            base_table[:bar],
            base_table[:baz]
    )
    .join(base_table)
    .on(inner_table[:model_inheritance_base_id].eq base_table[:id])
end

Here, Arel is used to describe how you want the base and inner table joined. The block parameters inner_table and base_table are both Arel::SelectTables, representing the inner model table and base model table respectively. The code inside the block must evaluate to Arel::SelectManager. Note that if you set the option base_reference_name to something different to :model_inheritance_base, you have to change the join condition accordingly.

When you run the active_record:model_inheritance:view generator, one of the things that's done is converting that Arel::SelectManager (the default one or your custom provided one) to SQL. In the case of the above example, the generated SQL will look something like this:

/* db/views/derived_models_v01.sql */

SELECT "derived_model_inners".*,
       "base_models"."foo",
       "base_models"."bar",
       "base_models"."baz"
FROM "derived_model_inners"
INNER JOIN "base_models"
    ON "derived_model_inners"."model_inheritance_base_id" = "base_models"."id"

This is how the database view backing the derived model will be created.

Sharing code between derived and inner

Sometimes it could be useful to have code replicated in both derived and inner models. This can be done by passing a block to derives_from.

class DerivedModel < ApplicationRecord
  include ActiveRecord::ModelInheritance::Model

  derives_from BaseModel do
    def foo
      # ...
    end
  end
end

In the above example, foo you will be declared in both derived and inner models.

Accessing the inner model

If for some reason you want to directly access the inner model, you can:

DerivedModel::Inner   # the inner model class

DerivedModel::Foo     # in case you've set inner_class_name to 'Foo'

DerivedModel.first._model_inheritance_inner   # instance of the inner model

A few words on multiple inheritance

This gem doesn't strictly prohibit multiple inheritance, and in in theory it should be possible to implement. Currently there are no plans on this, but if you find a clean solution you can share your work with us! (see Contributing)

Limitations

• A derived model is not a subclass of its base model
• Query methods called on base models will return only base models
• Query methods called on derived models will return only derived models

Future developments

• Improved and more comprehensive documentation
• Some ways around current limitations
• Testing with a dummy Rails application

Version numbers

Model Inheritance loosely follows Semantic Versioning, with a hard guarantee that breaking changes to the public API will always coincide with an increase to the MAJOR number.

Version numbers are in three parts: MAJOR.MINOR.PATCH.

• Breaking changes to the public API increment the MAJOR. There may also be changes that would otherwise increase the MINOR or the PATCH.
• Additions, deprecations, and "big" non breaking changes to the public API increment the MINOR. There may also be changes that would otherwise increase the PATCH.
• Bug fixes and "small" non breaking changes to the public API increment the PATCH.

Notice that any feature deprecated by a minor release can be expected to be removed by the next major release.

Changelog

Full list of changes in CHANGELOG.md

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/moku-io/activerecord-model_inheritance.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.