I have been reading about using model concerns to skin-nize fat models as well as DRY up your model codes. Here is an explanation with examples:
1) DRYing up model codes
Consider a Article model, a Event model and a Comment model. An article or an event has many comments. A comment belongs to either Article or Event.
Traditionally, the models may look like this:
Comment Model:
class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end
Article Model:
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :comments, as: :commentable
def find_first_comment
comments.first(created_at DESC)
end
def self.least_commented
#return the article with least number of comments
end
end
Event Model
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :comments, as: :commentable
def find_first_comment
comments.first(created_at DESC)
end
def self.least_commented
#returns the event with least number of comments
end
end
As we can notice, there is a significant piece of code common to both Event and Article. Using concerns we can extract this common code in a separate module Commentable.
For this create a commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns.
module Commentable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
has_many :comments, as: :commentable
end
# for the given article/event returns the first comment
def find_first_comment
comments.first(created_at DESC)
end
module ClassMethods
def least_commented
#returns the article/event which has the least number of comments
end
end
end
And now your models look like this :
Comment Model:
class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end
Article Model:
class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
include Commentable
end
Event Model:
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
include Commentable
end
2) Skin-nizing Fat Models.
Consider a Event model. A event has many attenders and comments.
Typically, the event model might look like this
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :comments
has_many :attenders
def find_first_comment
# for the given article/event returns the first comment
end
def find_comments_with_word(word)
# for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
end
def self.least_commented
# finds the event which has the least number of comments
end
def self.most_attended
# returns the event with most number of attendes
end
def has_attendee(attendee_id)
# returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
end
end
Models with many associations and otherwise have tendency to accumulate more and more code and become unmanageable. Concerns provide a way to skin-nize fat modules making them more modularized and easy to understand.
The above model can be refactored using concerns as below:
Create a attendable.rb and commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns/event folder
attendable.rb
module Attendable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
has_many :attenders
end
def has_attender(attender_id)
# returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
end
module ClassMethods
def most_attended
# returns the event with most number of attendes
end
end
end
commentable.rb
module Commentable
extend ActiveSupport::Concern
included do
has_many :comments
end
def find_first_comment
# for the given article/event returns the first comment
end
def find_comments_with_word(word)
# for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
end
module ClassMethods
def least_commented
# finds the event which has the least number of comments
end
end
end
And now using Concerns, your Event model reduces to
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
include Commentable
include Attendable
end
* While using concerns its advisable to go for 'domain' based grouping rather than 'technical' grouping. Domain Based grouping is like 'Commentable', 'Photoable', 'Attendable'. Technical grouping will mean 'ValidationMethods', 'FinderMethods' etc
