dbview_cti

This gem implements Class Table Inheritance (CTI) for Rails, as an alternative to Single Table Inheritance (STI). The implementation is based on database views. It allows you to combine polymorphism with database foreign key constraints.

Currently, only PostgreSQL (version >= 9.1) is supported. The gem supports Rails 3.2, 4.0, 4.1, 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 5.2, 6.0, 6.1, 7.0 and 7.1 apps running on MRI (>= 1.9.3) and JRuby.

Installation

Add the following to your Gemfile:

gem 'dbview_cti'

Example

Suppose we would like to have the following class hierarchy: a Vehicle superclass, its subclass MotorVehicle, and Car and MotorCycle wich are subclasses of MotorVehicle:

class Vehicle < ActiveRecord::Base
end

class MotorVehicle < Vehicle
end

class Car < MotorVehicle
end

class MotorCycle < MotorVehicle
end

With Class Table Inheritance, we use a separate database table for each class. Each table only stores the attributes that are specific to that class. dbview_cti uses database views to combine attributes from several tables in the hierarchy in an almost transparent way, so the resulting objects behave like normal ActiveRecord models (with a few exceptions).

In order to do this dbview_cti has to know all descendants of a class, so we modify our class definitions:

class Vehicle < ActiveRecord::Base
  cti_base_class
end

class MotorVehicle < Vehicle
  cti_derived_class
end

class Car < MotorVehicle
  cti_derived_class
end

class MotorCycle < MotorVehicle
  cti_derived_class
end

In the base class in the hierarchy (Vehicle in this case), we add a call to cti_base_class, in all derived classes we add cti_derived_class. It is important to add these before running any migrations for the models, otherwise the database views won't be generated correctly (it is always possible to have them regenerated, see further).

Now it's time to create the database tables (and views) using Rails migrations. The table for the base class is created using a standard migration, e.g.

class CreateVehicles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :vehicles do |t|
      t.string  :name
      t.integer :mass

      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

For the derived classes, we use cti_create_view(class_name), a method that dbview_cti adds to migrations:

class CreateMotorVehicles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :motor_vehicles do |t|
      t.references :vehicle
      t.string  :fuel
      t.integer :number_of_wheels

      t.timestamps
    end
    
    cti_create_view('MotorVehicle')
  end
end

There are two things to note in this migration:

1. The table references the table used for the parent class (vehicles in this case)
2. We call cti_create_view(class_name) to create the necessary database view and triggers, and to tell ActiveRecord to use the database view instead of the motor_vehicles table.

The migrations for Car and MotorCycle are very similar (i.e. they reference the parent table and call cti_create_view):

class CreateCars < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :cars do |t|
      t.references :motor_vehicle
      t.boolean :stick_shift
      t.boolean :convertible

      t.timestamps
    end
    
    cti_create_view('Car')
  end
end

class CreateMotorCycles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :motor_cycles do |t|
      t.references :motor_vehicle
      t.boolean :offroad

      t.timestamps
    end
    
    cti_create_view('MotorCycle')
  end
end

After running rake db:migrate we can now use our new models, e.g. in the rails console:

1.9.3-p448 :001 > c = Car.new
 => #<Car id: nil, name: nil, mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, stick_shift: nil, convertible: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> 
1.9.3-p448 :003 > c.name = 'Audi'
 => "Audi" 
1.9.3-p448 :004 > c.stick_shift = true
 => true 
1.9.3-p448 :005 > c.save!
 => true 

Note that Car has all attributes of the vehicles, motor_vehicles and cars tables combined. When saving, the attributes are stored in their corresponding tables.

Initializer

When running the migrations and for some of the functionality (see e.g. the convert_to and specialize methods below), it is important that each class knows about the full class hierarchy. This is taken care of automatically when a class is loaded. However, in order to have full class hierarchy information all classes in the hierarchy have to be loaded, which is not necessarily the case since rails lazy-loads classes (e.g. in development mode). Therefore, we have to force loading of all classes by referencing the leaf-classes in the hierarchy in an initializer.

For the example given above the leaf classes are Car and MotorCycle, so we put the following in an initializer (e.g. in config/initializers/dbview_cti.rb), for Rails versions using the classic autoloader:

# Force loading of all classes in the CTI hierachy by referencing the leaf classes here
Car
MotorCycle

For Rails versions using the Zeitwerk autoloader (Rails 6+), we cannot reference models inside initializers. This can solved using an after_initialize block in the initializer:

# Force loading of all classes in the CTI hierachy by referencing the leaf classes here
Rails.application.config.after_initialize do
  Car
  MotorCycle
end

In development mode, Rails reloads files as you modify them. If a file in the class hierarchy is modified, all classes have to be reloaded, otherwise methods such as specialize and convert_to (see below) will no longer work correctly. To make sure the whole hierarchy is reloaded at every request (in development) we can modify the above initializer to:

# this block makes rails reload the code after each request in development mode
Rails.configuration.to_prepare do
  # Force loading of all classes in the CTI hierachy by referencing the leaf classes here
  Car
  MotorCycle
end

Associations

Associations (has_many, has_one, etc.) work and are inherited as you would expect. There are three caveats:

• In the base class, you have to call cti_base_class before defining any associations:

class Vehicle < ActiveRecord::Base
  # call cti_base_class first...
  cti_base_class
  
  # ...before defining any associations
  has_many :parts
end

• In Rails 4 it might be necessary to explicitly specify the join table when using has_and_belongs_to_many:

class SpaceShip < Vehicle
  cti_derived_class

  has_and_belongs_to_many :astronauts, :join_table => 'astronauts_space_ships'
end

• You have to make sure that the association is defined in both classes, e.g. if you have belongs_to :car in a class called Part then Car should also define the association with has_many :parts (or has_one :part).

API

Models

dbview_cti adds two class methods to ActiveRecord::Base:

• cti_base_class, which should be included in the class definition of the base class of the hierarchy.
• cti_derived_class, which should be included in the class definition of every other class in the hierarchy.

When either cti_base_class or cti_derived_class are used in the definition of a model, the model is equipped with the following instance methods:

• convert_to(class_name). Use this to convert an object to another class. Both convert_to('MotorVehicle') and convert_to(:motor_vehicle) are ok. Example:

    1.9.3-p448 :003 > c = Car.create(:name => 'Audi')
     => #<Car id: 2, name: "Audi", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, stick_shift: nil, convertible: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :004 > v = c.convert_to(:vehicle)
     => #<Vehicle id: 3, name: "Audi", mass: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :005 > v.convert_to(:car)  # convert back to Car
     => #<Car id: 2, name: "Audi", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, stick_shift: nil, convertible: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:17:07"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :009 > v.convert_to(:motor_cycle)  # since v is a car we cannot convert it to a MotorCycle
     => nil 
  

• specialize converts an object to its 'true' (i.e. most specialized or most derived) class. Example:

    1.9.3-p448 :010 > c = Car.create(:name => 'Volvo')
     => #<Car id: 4, name: "Volvo", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, stick_shift: nil, convertible: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:27:26", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:27:26"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :011 > mv = MotorVehicle.create(:name => 'Trike')
     => #<MotorVehicle id: 5, name: "Trike", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:28:06", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:28:06"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :012 > c.convert_to(:vehicle).specialize
     => #<Car id: 4, name: "Volvo", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, stick_shift: nil, convertible: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:27:26", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:27:26"> 
    1.9.3-p448 :013 > mv.convert_to(:vehicle).specialize
     => #<MotorVehicle id: 5, name: "Trike", mass: nil, fuel: nil, number_of_wheels: nil, created_at: "2013-08-20 01:28:06", updated_at: "2013-08-20 01:28:06"> 
  

• type returns the 'true' (i.e. most specialized) class of an object (the class that the object is converted to when calling specialize).

Migrations

dbview_cti adds two methods to migrations:

• cti_create_view(class_name)
• cti_drop_view(class_name)

See the example migrations above about how to use cti_create_view. cti_drop_view can be used to drop a view created by cti_create_view (e.g. in the down method of a migration.)

It is also possible to recreate the database views (and triggers). This is necessary when you want to change one of the tables in the hierarchy, since then the views of all subclasses have to be recreated. dbview_cti provides the cti_recreate_views_after_change_to(class_name) method (to be used with a block) to do this:

class AddReliabilityToMotorVehicles < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def up
    cti_recreate_views_after_change_to('MotorVehicle') do
      add_column(:motor_vehicles, :reliability, :integer)
    end
  end
  
  def down
    cti_recreate_views_after_change_to('MotorVehicle') do
      remove_column(:motor_vehicles, :reliability)
    end
  end
end

The change syntax is not (yet?) supported for recreating database views.

Notes

• Using dbview_cti doesn't interfere with foreign key constraints. In fact, I highly recommend adding foreign key constraints between the tables in a CTI hierarchy (e.g. using foreigner).
• When creating foreign key constraints involving tables that are part of the hierarchy, always refer to the tables themselves, not the views. When modifying the models in future migrations, the views may need to be recreated, which would cause problems with the foreign key constraints.
• Take care when using database id's. Since the data for a Car object is spread over several tables, the id of a Car instance will generally be different than the id of the MotorVehicle instance you get when you convert the Car instance to a MotorVehicle.
• The gem intercepts calls to destroy to make sure all rows in all tables are removed. This is not the case for delete_all, however, so avoid using delete_all for classes in the CTI hierarchy.

Is it production ready?

Yes, it is. I'm using it in production in two (relatively small) apps without any issues.