Edge

Edge provides graph functionality to ActiveRecord using recursive common table expressions. It has only been tested with PostgreSQL, but it uses Arel for SQL generation so it should work with any database and adapter that support recursive CTEs.

acts_as_forest enables an entire tree or even an entire forest of trees to be loaded in a single query. All parent and children associations are preloaded.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'edge'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install edge

acts_as_forest adds tree / multi-tree functionality. All it needs a parent_id column. This can be overridden by passing a :foreign_key option to acts_as_forest.

class Location < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_forest :order => "name"
end

usa = Location.create! :name => "USA"
illinois = usa.children.create! :name => "Illinois"
chicago = illinois.children.create! :name => "Chicago"
indiana = usa.children.create! :name => "Indiana"
canada = Location.create! :name => "Canada"
british_columbia = canada.children.create! :name => "British Columbia"

Location.root.all # [usa, canada]
Location.find_forest # [usa, canada] with all children and parents preloaded
Location.find_tree usa.id # load a single tree.

It also provides the with_descendants scope to get all currently selected nodes and all their descendents. It can be chained after where scopes, but must not be used after any other type of scope.

Location.where(name: "Illinois").with_descendants.all # [illinois, chicago]

Also supported is ancestors instance method which returns an array of all ancestors ordered by nearest ancestors first.

city = Location.where(name: 'Chicago')
ancestors = city.ancestors # [illinois, usa]

Edge includes a performance benchmarks. You can create test forests with a configurable number of trees, depth, number of children per node, and size of payload per node.

jack@moya:~/work/edge$ ruby -I lib -I bench bench/forest_find.rb --help
Usage: forest_find [options]
    -t, --trees NUM                  Number of trees to create
    -d, --depth NUM                  Depth of trees
    -c, --children NUM               Number of children per node
    -p, --payload NUM                Characters of payload per node

Even on slower machines entire trees can be loaded quickly.

jack@moya:~/work/edge$ ruby -I lib -I bench bench/forest_find.rb
Trees: 50
Depth: 3
Children per node: 10
Payload characters per node: 16
Descendants per tree: 110
Total records: 5550
                                               user     system      total        real
Load entire forest 10 times                4.260000   0.010000   4.270000 (  4.422442)
Load one tree 100 times                    0.830000   0.040000   0.870000 (  0.984642)

1. Create a database such as edge_bench.
2. Configure bench/database.yml to connect to it.
3. Load bench/database_structure.sql into your bench database.
4. Run benchmark scripts from root of gem directory (remember to pass ruby the include paths for lib and bench)

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request

MIT