Model Class Methods

Objectives

Know when to use a model class method
Create model class methods for custom queries

Lesson

We're gonna keep working on our blog application and adding more features, so make sure to follow along and try out the code for yourself as we go!

Make sure to run rake db:seed to get some starter posts and authors. You might be surprised to see the big names that definitely wrote these example blog posts!

Filtering Posts by Author

We have our list of blog posts, which is great, but our readers would like to be able to filter the list by author. Let's do what every great blog does and pander to the masses!

We want to start by adding some controls to our view to do the filtering:

<!-- app/views/posts/index.html.erb -->

<h1>Believe It Or Not I'm Blogging On Air</h1>

<!-- add this new code above the @posts.each loop -->
<div>
  <h3>Filter posts:</h3>
  <%= form_tag("/posts", method: "get") do %>
    <%= select_tag "author", options_from_collection_for_select(Author.all, "id", "name"), include_blank: true %>
    <%= submit_tag "Filter" %>
  <% end %>
</div>
<!-- end new code -->

<% @posts.each do |post| %>

  ...

<% end %>

Now if we refresh /posts, we should see a select control with our authors in it and a button. Pick an author and hit "Filter"!

Hm, nothing interesting happened. Rails is magical but not that magical. We have to take that action and write the code to do the filtering.

Since we're here, we'll just add it right into the view. At the top of our index view, let's add the following:

<!-- app/views/posts/index.html.erb -->

<!-- new code starts here -->
<% if !params[:author].blank? %>
  <% @posts = Post.where(author: params[:author]) %>
<% end %>
<!-- new code ends here -->

<h1>Believe It Or Not I'm Blogging On Air</h1>

  ...

And to ensure that our view has access to the controller's params hash, let's go into posts_controller and add this line near the top:

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

class PostsController < ApplicationController
  helper_method :params

  def index

    ...

Note: You can use helper_method in a controller to expose, or make available, a controller method in your view, but, as we'll talk about soon, this isn't always a great idea.

Let's reload our /posts page and try that filter again. It works! Now our readers can filter posts by author.

Filtering Posts by Date

Job well done. But before we can get even another cup of coffee, we find out our readers want to be able to filter posts by date so they can see the freshest hot takes.

Let's get back into our view and add the new filter to our form:

<!-- app/views/posts/index.html.erb -->

<%= form_tag("/posts", method: "get") do %>
  <%= select_tag "author", options_from_collection_for_select(Author.all, "id", "name"), include_blank: true %>

  <!-- new code -->
  <%= select_tag "date", options_for_select(["Today", "Old News"]), include_blank: true %>
  <%= submit_tag "Filter" %>
<% end %>

And then let's activate that filter so the new code at the top of our view looks like this:

<!-- app/views/posts/index.html.erb -->

<% if !params[:author].blank? %>
  <% @posts = Post.where(author: params[:author]) %>
<% elsif !params[:date].blank? %>
  <% if params[:date] == "Today" %>
    <% @posts = Post.where("created_at >=?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day) %>
  <% else %>
    <% @posts = Post.where("created_at <?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day) %>
  <% end %>
<% end %>

<h1>Believe It Or Not I'm Blogging On Air</h1>

  ...

Reload /posts and try it out. If they choose an author, they can filter by author, or they can filter by date, or they can have it all. We've pleased everyone!

Just Between Us: We haven't pleased everyone because someone will inevitably want to now filter on the combination of an author and a date. We could do that, but today, in this lesson, we're going to stand against the slings and arrows of scope creep!

Refactoring out of the View

Okay. We did it! We added our filters. But we understand that in MVC we separate concerns and put code in the right place. Looking at our current posts#index view cluttered with so much business logic got us like:

So it's time to do some refactoring.

We have some pretty big red flags here:

View directly querying the database for posts and authors!
View reading params, which we had to go out of our way to allow from the controller!
View overriding @posts, which the controller is already creating, fully doubling our database requests!

Okay. Let's get to work. First, let's dive back into the posts#index view and kill that filter logic. Just straight up delete everything that comes before the <h1> so that it looks like this:

<!-- app/views/posts/index.html.erb -->

<h1>Believe It Or Not I'm Blogging On Air</h1>
<div>
  <h3>Filter posts:</h3>
  <%= form_tag("/posts", method: "get") do %>
    <%= select_tag "author", options_from_collection_for_select(@authors, "id", "name"), include_blank: true %>
    <%= select_tag "date", options_for_select(["Today", "Old News"]), include_blank: true %>
    <%= submit_tag "Filter" %>
  <% end %>
</div>
<% @posts.each do |post| %>
  <div>
    <h2><%= post.title %></h2>
    <h3>by: <%= link_to post.author.name, author_path(post.author) %></h3>
    <p><%= post.description %></p>
  </div>
<% end %>

Don't forget to also change the select_tag options from Author.all to @authors because our view shouldn't be directly querying the database for that, either. A view's concern is presentation. The controller should give it all the data it needs.

Now let's get into our controller and repurpose our filter code so it will run there.

First, let's get rid of that helper_method :params line. We don't need it anymore. Reading params is a controller concern, so we don't need to expose it to the views.

Now let's dig into our index method and make some changes. First, we need to add this line to satisfy our author select control: @authors = Author.all. We're using the same code, just moving it to where it belongs.

Then let's put in our filter code so that index looks like this:

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

def index
  # provide a list of authors to the view for the filter control
  @authors = Author.all

  # filter the @posts list based on user input
  if !params[:author].blank?
    @posts = Post.where(author: params[:author])
  elsif !params[:date].blank?
    if params[:date] == "Today"
      @posts = Post.where("created_at >=?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day)
    else
      @posts = Post.where("created_at <?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day)
    end
  else
    # if no filters are applied, show all posts
    @posts = Post.all
  end
end

Great! Now let's reload the /posts page and make sure everything still works.

Refactoring Database Logic out of the Controller

This is looking much better. Our view is back to only dealing with presentation logic, and our controller is providing the right data. But we're still not there yet.

If we think about separation of concerns, is the controller concerned with having deep knowledge of the database so that it can make queries directly? No. All a controller wants to do is ask a model for what it needs in the simplest way possible.

So having something that looks like this...

@posts = Post.where("created_at >=?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day)

...isn't the best application of MVC and separation of concerns. We want the model to know things like "created_at >=?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day and the controller to just ask for something more like from_today.

So we need to move this into the model. Now, the question becomes: is this a class method on the Post model itself, or is it an instance method on a specific post?

Well, since we are going to be asking for multiple post instances from the database, we won't have an instance to begin with, so we'll need to use a class method.

Class methods are commonly used on ActiveRecord models to encapsulate this type of custom query functionality, so let's do that now.

First, we want to add one for the author filter. Let's dive into post.rb and get to work.

# app/models/post.rb

def self.by_author(author_id)
  where(author: author_id)
end

You'll notice that it's essentially the same code that we had in the controller, but it's now properly encapsulated in the model. This way, a controller doesn't have to query the database — it just has to ask for posts by_author.

So let's do that. Get back in the posts_controller, and change the code to use our new class method:

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

if !params[:author].blank?
  @posts = Post.by_author(params[:author])
elsif !params[:date].blank?

  ...

Top-tip: There are always more ways to accomplish the same thing. You may be wondering why we didn't just find the author and return author.posts. That also would work. But when we think about constructing an application in a logical way, using principles like Separation of Concerns to guide us, we can conclude that the posts_controller is concerned with the Post model, so almost everything that controller does will probably flow through that model.

Now that we have that done, we can reload our /posts page and make sure it's all still working.

Next, let's give the same treatment to our date filter. We want to move the database code from the controller to the model, so let's add a couple more class methods to the Post model:

# app/models/post.rb

...

def self.from_today
  where("created_at >=?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day)
end

def self.old_news
  where("created_at <?", Time.zone.today.beginning_of_day)
end

And then let's update our controller to use them. Our final index method should now look like this:

# app/controllers/posts_controller.rb

def index
  # provide a list of authors to the view for the filter control
  @authors = Author.all

  # filter the @posts list based on user input
  if !params[:author].blank?
    @posts = Post.by_author(params[:author])
  elsif !params[:date].blank?
    if params[:date] == "Today"
      @posts = Post.from_today
    else
      @posts = Post.old_news
    end
  else
    # if no filters are applied, show all posts
    @posts = Post.all
  end
end

Let's test it out and see if it works. And for good measure, let's run rspec on the console and make sure our tests pass. All green? Good.

Summary

We've taken a look at a few different ways to create some features, but the big takeaway is this: by considering the separation of concerns, sticking to MVC, and using class methods on our models, we were ultimately able to implement those features in a clean, well-organized way.

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