ActiveRecord::Precount

N+1 count query killer for ActiveRecord. Yet another counter_cache alternative.
ActiveRecord::Precount allows you to cache count of associated records by eager loading.

Project Status

Softly deprecated in favor of activerecord-precounter.

Major features of activerecord-precount are working with ActiveRecord 5.1, but it has no active maintainer (it's welcome that you become the one) and its design is fragile to ActiveRecord internal changes.

activerecord-precounter is strong for ActiveRecord internal changes and now it's recommended to use it instead.

Synopsis

N+1 count query

Sometimes you may see many count queries for one association. You can use counter_cache to solve it, but it costs much to use counter_cache.

Tweet.all.each do |tweet|
  p tweet.favorites.count
end
# SELECT `tweets`.* FROM `tweets`
# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` = 1
# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` = 2
# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` = 3
# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` = 4
# SELECT COUNT(*) FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` = 5

Count eager loading

precount

With activerecord-precount gem installed, you can use precount method to eagerly load counts of associated records. Like preload, it loads counts by multiple queries

Tweet.all.precount(:favorites).each do |tweet|
  p tweet.favorites_count
end
# SELECT `tweets`.* FROM `tweets`
# SELECT COUNT(`favorites`.`tweet_id`), `favorites`.`tweet_id` FROM `favorites` WHERE `favorites`.`tweet_id` IN (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) GROUP BY `favorites`.`tweet_id`

eager_count

Like eager_load, eager_count method allows you to load counts by one JOIN query.

Tweet.all.eager_count(:favorites).each do |tweet|
  p tweet.favorites_count
end
# SELECT `tweets`.`id` AS t0_r0, `tweets`.`tweet_id` AS t0_r1, `tweets`.`user_id` AS t0_r2, `tweets`.`created_at` AS t0_r3, `tweets`.`updated_at` AS t0_r4, COUNT(`favorites`.`id`) AS t1_r0 FROM `tweets` LEFT OUTER JOIN `favorites` ON `favorites`.`tweet_id` = `tweets`.`id` GROUP BY tweets.id

Benchmark

The result of this benchmark.

	N+1 query	precount	eager_count
Time	1.401	0.176	0.119
Ratio	1.0x	7.9x faster	11.7x faster

# Tweet count is 50, and each tweet has 10 favorites
Tweet.all.map{ |t| t.favorites.count }                # N+1 query
Tweet.precount(:favorites).map(&:favorites_count)     # precount
Tweet.eager_count(:favorites).map(&:favorites_count)  # eager_count

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'activerecord-precount'

Supported Versions

Ruby
- 2.1, 2.2, 2.3
Rails
- 4.2, 5.0
Databases
- sqlite
- mysql
- postgresql

Advanced Usage

Nested eager loading

Foo.precount(:bars) or Foo.eager_count(:bars) automatically defines bars_count association for Foo. That enables you to preload the association and call foo.bars_count.

You can manually define bars_count with following code.

 class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
-  has_many :bars
+  has_many :bars, count_loader: true
 end

Then there are two different ways to preload the bars_count.

# the same
Foo.preload(:bars_count)
Foo.precount(:bars)

With this condition, you can eagerly load nested association by preload.

Hoge.preload(foo: :bars_count)

`count` method is not recommended

With activerecord-precount gem installed, bars.count fallbacks to bars_count if bars_count is defined. Though precounted bars.count is faster than not-precounted one, the fallback is currently much slower than just calling bars_count.

# slow
Foo.precount(:bars).map { |f| f.bars.count }
Foo.eager_count(:bars).map { |f| f.bars.count }

# fast (recommended)
Foo.precount(:bars).map { |f| f.bars_count }
Foo.eager_count(:bars).map { |f| f.bars_count }

License

MIT License