Active Record and PostgreSQL

This guide covers PostgreSQL specific usage of Active Record.

In order to use the PostgreSQL adapter you need to have at least version 8.2 installed. Older versions are not supported.

To get started with PostgreSQL have a look at the configuring Rails guide. It describes how to properly setup Active Record for PostgreSQL.

After reading this guide, you will know:

How to use PostgreSQL's datatypes.
How to use UUID primary keys.
How to implement full text search with PostgreSQL.

Datatypes

PostgreSQL offers a number of specific datatypes. Following is a list of types, that are supported by the PostgreSQL adapter.

Bytea

type definition
functions and operators

# db/migrate/20140207133952_create_documents.rb
create_table :documents do |t|
  t.binary 'payload'
end

# app/models/document.rb
class Document < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
data = File.read(Rails.root + "tmp/output.pdf")
Document.create payload: data

Array

type definition
functions and operators

# db/migrate/20140207133952_create_books.rb
create_table :book do |t|
  t.string 'title'
  t.string 'tags', array: true
  t.integer 'ratings', array: true
end

# app/models/book.rb
class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Book.create title: "Brave New World",
            tags: ["fantasy", "fiction"],
            ratings: [4, 5]

## Books for a single tag
Book.where("'fantasy' = ANY (tags)")

## Books for multiple tags
Book.where("tags @> ARRAY[?]::varchar[]", ["fantasy", "fiction"])

## Books with 3 or more ratings
Book.where("array_length(ratings, 1) >= 3")

Hstore

type definition

# db/migrate/20131009135255_create_profiles.rb
ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
  create_table :profiles do |t|
    t.hstore 'settings'
  end
end

# app/models/profile.rb
class Profile < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Profile.create(settings: { "color" => "blue", "resolution" => "800x600" })

profile = Profile.first
profile.settings # => {"color"=>"blue", "resolution"=>"800x600"}

profile.settings = {"color" => "yellow", "resulution" => "1280x1024"}
profile.save!

## you need to call _will_change! if you are editing the store in place
profile.settings["color"] = "green"
profile.settings_will_change!
profile.save!

JSON

type definition
functions and operators

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_events.rb
create_table :events do |t|
  t.json 'payload'
end

# app/models/event.rb
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Event.create(payload: { kind: "user_renamed", change: ["jack", "john"]})

event = Event.first
event.payload # => {"kind"=>"user_renamed", "change"=>["jack", "john"]}

## Query based on JSON document
Event.where("payload->'kind' = ?", "user_renamed")

Range Types

type definition
functions and operators

This type is mapped to Ruby Range objects.

# db/migrate/20130923065404_create_events.rb
create_table :events do |t|
  t.daterange 'duration'
end

# app/models/event.rb
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Event.create(duration: Date.new(2014, 2, 11)..Date.new(2014, 2, 12))

event = Event.first
event.duration # => Tue, 11 Feb 2014...Thu, 13 Feb 2014

## All Events on a given date
Event.where("duration @> ?::date", Date.new(2014, 2, 12))

## Working with range bounds
event = Event.
  select("lower(duration) AS starts_at").
  select("upper(duration) AS ends_at").first

event.starts_at # => Tue, 11 Feb 2014
event.ends_at # => Thu, 13 Feb 2014

Composite Types

type definition

Currently there is no special support for composite types. They are mapped to as normal text columns:

CREATE TYPE full_address AS
(
  city VARCHAR(90),
  street VARCHAR(90)
);

# db/migrate/20140207133952_create_contacts.rb
execute <<-SQL
 CREATE TYPE full_address AS
 (
   city VARCHAR(90),
   street VARCHAR(90)
 );
SQL
create_table :contacts do |t|
  t.column :address, :full_address
end

# app/models/contact.rb
class Contact < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Contact.create address: "(Paris,Champs-Élysées)"
contact = Contact.first
contact.address # => "(Paris,Champs-Élysées)"
contact.address = "(Paris,Rue Basse)"
contact.save!

Enumerated Types

type definition

Currently there is no special support for enumerated types. They are mapped as normal text columns:

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_events.rb
execute <<-SQL
  CREATE TYPE article_status AS ENUM ('draft', 'published');
SQL
create_table :articles do |t|
  t.column :status, :article_status
end

# app/models/article.rb
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Article.create status: "draft"
article = Article.first
article.status # => "draft"

article.status = "published"
article.save!

UUID

type definition
generator functions

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_revisions.rb
create_table :revisions do |t|
  t.column :identifier, :uuid
end

# app/models/revision.rb
class Revision < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Revision.create identifier: "A0EEBC99-9C0B-4EF8-BB6D-6BB9BD380A11"

revision = Revision.first
revision.identifier # => "a0eebc99-9c0b-4ef8-bb6d-6bb9bd380a11"

Bit String Types

type definition
functions and operators

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_users.rb
create_table :users, force: true do |t|
  t.column :settings, "bit(8)"
end

# app/models/device.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
User.create settings: "01010011"
user = User.first
user.settings # => "(Paris,Champs-Élysées)"
user.settings = "0xAF"
user.settings # => 10101111
user.save!

Network Address Types

type definition

The types inet and cidr are mapped to Ruby IPAddr objects. The macaddr type is mapped to normal text.

# db/migrate/20140508144913_create_devices.rb
create_table(:devices, force: true) do |t|
  t.inet 'ip'
  t.cidr 'network'
  t.macaddr 'address'
end

# app/models/device.rb
class Device < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
macbook = Device.create(ip: "192.168.1.12",
                        network: "192.168.2.0/24",
                        address: "32:01:16:6d:05:ef")

macbook.ip
# => #<IPAddr: IPv4:192.168.1.12/255.255.255.255>

macbook.network
# => #<IPAddr: IPv4:192.168.2.0/255.255.255.0>

macbook.address
# => "32:01:16:6d:05:ef"

Geometric Types

type definition

All geometric types are mapped to normal text.

UUID Primary Keys

NOTE: you need to enable the uuid-ossp extension to generate UUIDs.

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_devices.rb
enable_extension 'uuid-ossp' unless extension_enabled?('uuid-ossp')
create_table :devices, id: :uuid, default: 'uuid_generate_v4()' do |t|
  t.string :kind
end

# app/models/device.rb
class Device < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
device = Device.create
device.id # => "814865cd-5a1d-4771-9306-4268f188fe9e"

Full Text Search

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_documents.rb
create_table :documents do |t|
  t.string 'title'
  t.string 'body'
end

execute "CREATE INDEX documents_idx ON documents USING gin(to_tsvector('english', title || ' ' || body));"

# app/models/document.rb
class Document < ActiveRecord::Base
end

# Usage
Document.create(title: "Cats and Dogs", body: "are nice!")

## all documents matching 'cat & dog'
Document.where("to_tsvector('english', title || ' ' || body) @@ to_tsquery(?)",
                 "cat & dog")

Views

view creation

Imagine you need to work with a legacy database containing the following table:

rails_pg_guide=# \d "TBL_ART"
                                        Table "public.TBL_ART"
   Column   |            Type             |                         Modifiers
------------+-----------------------------+------------------------------------------------------------
 INT_ID     | integer                     | not null default nextval('"TBL_ART_INT_ID_seq"'::regclass)
 STR_TITLE  | character varying           |
 STR_STAT   | character varying           | default 'draft'::character varying
 DT_PUBL_AT | timestamp without time zone |
 BL_ARCH    | boolean                     | default false
Indexes:
    "TBL_ART_pkey" PRIMARY KEY, btree ("INT_ID")

This table does not follow the Rails conventions at all. Because simple PostgreSQL views are updateable by default, we can wrap it as follows:

# db/migrate/20131220144913_create_articles_view.rb
execute <<-SQL
CREATE VIEW articles AS
  SELECT "INT_ID" AS id,
         "STR_TITLE" AS title,
         "STR_STAT" AS status,
         "DT_PUBL_AT" AS published_at,
         "BL_ARCH" AS archived
  FROM "TBL_ART"
  WHERE "BL_ARCH" = 'f'
  SQL

# app/models/article.rb
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.primary_key = "id"
  def archive!
    update_attribute :archived, true
  end
end

# Usage
first = Article.create! title: "Winter is coming",
                        status: "published",
                        published_at: 1.year.ago
second = Article.create! title: "Brace yourself",
                         status: "draft",
                         published_at: 1.month.ago

Article.count # => 1
first.archive!
p Article.count # => 2

Note: This application only cares about non-archived Articles. A view also allows for conditions so we can exclude the archived Articles directly.

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active_record_postgresql.md

active_record_postgresql.md

Active Record and PostgreSQL

Datatypes

Bytea

Array

Hstore

JSON

Range Types

Composite Types

Enumerated Types

UUID

Bit String Types

Network Address Types

Geometric Types

UUID Primary Keys

Full Text Search

Views

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active_record_postgresql.md

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active_record_postgresql.md

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Active Record and PostgreSQL

Datatypes

Bytea

Array

Hstore

JSON

Range Types

Composite Types

Enumerated Types

UUID

Bit String Types

Network Address Types

Geometric Types

UUID Primary Keys

Full Text Search

Views