Activerecord::DelayTouching
Note: this version requires ActiveRecord 4.2 or higher. To use ActiveRecord 3.2 through 4.1, use the branch https://github.com/godaddy/activerecord-delay_touching/tree/pre-activerecord-4.2.
Batch up your ActiveRecord "touch" operations for better performance.
When you want to invalidate a cache in Rails, you use touch: true
. But when
you modify a bunch of records that all belong_to
the same owning record, that record
will be touched N times. It's incredibly slow.
With this gem, all touch
operations are consolidated into as few database
round-trips as possible. Instead of N touches you get 1 touch.
Installation
Add this line to your application's Gemfile:
gem 'activerecord-delay_touching'
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it yourself:
$ gem install activerecord-delay_touching
Usage
The setup:
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :pets
accepts_nested_attributes_for :pets
end
class Pet < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :person, touch: true
end
Without delay_touching
, this simple update
in the controller calls
@person.touch
N times, where N is the number of pets that were updated
via nested attributes. That's N-1 unnecessary round-trips to the database:
class PeopleController < ApplicationController
def update
...
#
@person.update(person_params)
...
end
end
# SQL (0.1ms) UPDATE "people" SET "updated_at" = '2014-07-09 19:48:07.137158' WHERE "people"."id" = 1
# SQL (0.1ms) UPDATE "people" SET "updated_at" = '2014-07-09 19:48:07.138457' WHERE "people"."id" = 1
# SQL (0.1ms) UPDATE "people" SET "updated_at" = '2014-07-09 19:48:07.140088' WHERE "people"."id" = 1
With delay_touching
, @person is touched only once:
ActiveRecord::Base.delay_touching do
@person.update(person_params)
end
# SQL (0.1ms) UPDATE "people" SET "updated_at" = '2014-07-09 19:48:07.140088' WHERE "people"."id" = 1
Consolidates Touches Per Table
In the following example, a person gives his pet to another person. ActiveRecord
automatically touches the old person and the new person. With delay_touching
,
this will only make a single round-trip to the database, setting updated_at
for all Person records in a single SQL UPDATE statement. Not a big deal when there are
only two touches, but when you're updating records en masse and have a cascade
of hundreds touches, it really is a big deal.
class Pet < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :person, touch: true
def give(to_person)
ActiveRecord::Base.delay_touching do
self.person = to_person
save! # touches old person and new person in a single SQL UPDATE.
end
end
end
Cascading Touches
When delay_touch
runs through and touches everything, it captures additional
touch
calls that might be called as side-effects. (E.g., in after_touch
handlers.) Then it makes a second pass, batching up those touches as well.
It keeps doing this until there are no more touches, or until the sun swallows up the earth. Whichever comes first.
Gotchas
Things to note:
-
after_touch
callbacks are still fired for every instance, but not until the block is exited. And they won't happen in the same order as they would if you weren't batching up your touches. - If you call person1.touch and then person2.touch, and they are two separate instances
with the same id, only person1's
after_touch
handler will be called.
Contributing
- Fork it ( https://github.com/godaddy/activerecord-delay_touching/fork )
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create a new Pull Request