ActiveRecord Golf

Posted on
January 14, 2011

by
Avdi Grimm

So I was messing around with some scratchpad code today, investigating the use of with_exclusive_scope, and here’s what I had to write to come up with a minimal working ActiveRecord model:

require 'rubygems'
require 'active_record'

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
  :adapter => "sqlite3",
  :database => ":memory:")

ActiveRecord::Base.connection.create_table(:monsters) do |t|
  t.string :name
end

class Monster < ActiveRecord::Base
end

cm = Monster.create(:name => "Cookie Monster")

For little one-off demo scripts that seems a bit excessive to me. For comparison, here’s the equivalent DataMapper:

require 'rubygems'
require 'datamapper'

class Monster
  include DataMapper::Resource

  property :name, String, :key => true
end

DataMapper.setup(:default, 'sqlite::memory:')
DataMapper.auto_migrate!

cm = Monster.create(:name => "Cookie Monster")

Can anyone golf the ActiveRecord down any smaller?

EDIT: Thanks to Jacob Rothstein for this version:

require 'active_record'

class Monster < ActiveRecord::Base
  establish_connection :adapter  => 'sqlite3',
                       :database => ':memory:'

  connection.create_table( :monsters ) { |t| t.string :name }

  cm = create :name => 'cookie monster'
end

Related posts:

  1. NullDB for DataMapper
  2. Announcing NullDB 0.0.1
  3. Using AlterEgo with ActiveRecord
  4. Looking for a new NullDB maintainer
  5. The State of SimpleDB Clones
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  • http://ekenosen.net/nick nevans

    I think you're picking at nits for a) how excessive the AR version is and b) how gloriously terse the DM version is. Yes, the DM version is a little shorter. But the key reasons it is shorter has little to do with what sets DM apart as nicer — e.g. mixin vs inheritance (AR is shorter), properties in class with automigration (AR is about the same with one column, and shorter with more) — and everything to do with the setup/establish_connection methods (DM's terse connection string is arguably more cryptic than a config hash) and that “ActiveRecord::Base” is almost twice as long as “DataMapper”, both of which are nice and all… but not all that important to normal measures of excessive, even in minimal scratchpad scripts.

    That said, if it's golf you want, then here's a very half-hearted golf attempt:

    ARB = ActiveRecord::Base
    ARB.establish_connection :adapter => “sqlite3″, :database => “:memory:”
    ARB.connection.create_table(:monsters) {|t| t.string :name }
    class Monster < ARB; end

    and, to be an equal opportunity obfuscator, here's the same level of effort for DM:

    DM = DataMapper
    class Monster; include DM::Resource; property :name, String, :key => true; end
    DM.setup(:default, 'sqlite::memory:'); DM.auto_migrate!

    (no more than 78 col per line in both examples)

    • http://wideteams.com Avdi Grimm

      I think you're reading too much into this. I just wanted to know if there was a shorter version of the AR code that I could use for demo scripts. As it turns out, there is – see the edit above, courtesy Jacob Rothstein.

  • http://twitter.com/regularfry Alex Young

    There ought to be a way to replace that connection hash with a connection URL like “sqlite3://:memory:”, but I can’t figure out the precise format.