Datamappify

Introduction

ActiveRecord is without doubt the de facto ORM library for Rails and many Ruby web frameworks. Many developers however, do not like database migrations and prefer to use DSL for data mapping. Datamappify is created with the sole purpose of getting rid of the DB migration headaches.

Brought to you by Envato and Wuit.

Disclaimer

This plugin is NOT production-ready yet! Use with caution.

Todo

• Add tests
• Possibly refactor add_index to be part of the property definition (as seen in the DataMapper library)

Why?

Why Not DB Migrations?

Well, depending on your specific project, DB migrations might create more trouble than it's worth. Besides, your code is already version controlled, so why create a separate version control for your DB schema?

Why Not Use DataMapper, Sequel, etc?

As stated in the introduction, ActiveRecord is the most popular ORM in the rails community, it is actively developed and battle-tested. If your only grief with ActiveRecord is the DB migrations, why not just eliminate it be happy? ;)

How?

How does this plugin work?

Basically, it -

1. Uses a DSL similar to DataMapper's for defining model properties (DB mapping).
2. schema.rb is automatically updated according to the model properties.
3. Automatically 'migrates' the database according to the updated schema file.

Installation

gem install datamappify

Don't forget to include the library in your Gemfile:

gem 'datamappify'

Usage

Here's an example to get you started:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Datamappify::Resource
  
  property  :email, :string
  property  :password, :string, :limit => 40
  property  :first_name, :string, :limit => 50
  property  :last_name, :string, :limit => 50
  property  :payment_email, :string
  property  :timestamps
  add_index :email
  add_index :payment_email
  add_index :role_id
  
  belongs_to :role
end

It will create the following schema:

create_table "users", :force => true do |t|
  t.string   :email,               :limit => nil
  t.string   :password,            :limit => nil
  t.string   :first_name,          :limit => nil
  t.string   :last_name,           :limit => nil
  t.string   :payment_email,       :limit => nil
  t.integer  :role_id,             :limit => nil
  t.datetime :created_at
  t.datetime :updated_at
end

add_index "users", :email
add_index "users", :payment_email
add_index "users", :role_id

property()

Use property to define and map DB columns. It accepts a number of arguments:

1. Name of the column.
2. SQL type of the column, same as the ones provided by ActiveRecord migrations.
3. Column options, same as the ones provided by ActiveRecord migrations.

add_index()

Use add_index to add DB indexes. It accepts a number of arguments:

1. The column(s) to index on, can be just one column or a number of columns in an array.
2. Index options such as name, unique and length.

Rake Tasks

To set up your database for the first time, please run:

rake db:schema:update
rake db:setup

Later on, to only update the schema.rb file, run:

rake db:schema:update

To update schema.rb and to 'migrate' the updated database structure, run:

rake db:schema:auto_migrate

Author

Copyright (c) 2010 Fred Wu (http://fredwu.me), released under the MIT license

• Envato - http://envato.com
• Wuit - http://wuit.com