Octopus is a better way to do Database Sharding in ActiveRecord. Sharding allows multiple databases in the same rails application. While there are several projects that implement Sharding (e.g. DbCharmer, DataFabric, MultiDb), each project has its own limitations. The main goal of octopus project is to provide a better way of doing Database Sharding.
The api is designed to be simple as possible. Octopus focuses on the end user, giving the power of multiple databases but with reliable code and flexibility. Octopus is focused on Rails 3, but is compatible with Rails 2.x.
Octopus supports:
- Sharding (with multiple shards, and grouped shards).
- Replication (Master/slave support, with multiple slaves).
- Moving data between shards with migrations.
- Tools to manage database configurations. (soon)
When using replication, all writes queries will be sent to master, and read queries to slaves. More info could be found at: Wiki
When using sharding, you need to specify which shard to send the query. Octopus supports selecting the shard inside a controller, or manually in each object. More could be found at Wiki
Replication + Sharding isn't supported yet. This is on our TODO list and will be done ASAP. If you need, feel free to fork and implement it.
Install the octopus gem:
sudo gem install ar-octopus
Add this line to enviroment.rb:
config.gem 'ar-octopus', :lib => "octopus"
Add this line to Gemfile:
gem 'ar-octopus', :require => 'octopus'
Runs a bundle install:
bundle install
Octopus < 0.5.0 stored schema version information in the master database defined in the database.yml file, and assumed that each shard's schema matched the others and the master database. Beginning with Octopus 0.5.0, the schema version information for each shard is stored within that shard's database.
If you are upgrading from < 0.5.0 run the copy_schema_versions rake task to copy the schema version information in the
master database to each of the shards:
rake octopus:copy_schema_versions
Once the task completes migrations will operate normally and schema information will be stored in each shard database going forward.
In order to run this task in Rails 2.3, you'll need to tell Rails to load Octopus' rake tasks by adding this to your Rakefile:
Dir["#{Gem.searcher.find('ar-octopus').full_gem_path}/lib/tasks/**/*.rake"].each { |ext| load ext }
First, you need to create a config file, shards.yml, inside your config/ directory. to see the syntax and how this file should look, please checkout this page on wiki.
Octopus adds a method to each AR Class and object: the using method is used to select the shard like this:
User.where(:name => "Thiago").limit(3).using(:slave_one)
Octopus also supports queries within a block. When you pass a block to the using method, all queries inside the block will be sent to the specified shard.
Octopus.using(:slave_two) do
User.create(:name => "Mike")
end
Each model instance knows which shard it came from so this will work automatically:
# This will find the user in the shard1
@user = User.using(:shard1).find_by_name("Joao")
# This will find the user in the master database
@user2 = User.find_by_name("Jose")
#Sets the name
@user.name = "Mike"
# Save the user in the correct shard, shard1.
@user.save
In migrations, you also have access to the using method. The syntax is basically the same. This migration will run in the brazil and canada shards.
class CreateUsersOnBothShards < ActiveRecord::Migration
using(:brazil, :canada)
def self.up
User.create!(:name => "Both")
end
def self.down
User.delete_all
end
end
You also could send a migration to a group of shards. This migration will be sent to all shards that belongs to history_shards group, specified in shards.yml:
class CreateUsersOnMultiplesGroups < ActiveRecord::Migration
using_group(:history_shards)
def self.up
User.create!(:name => "MultipleGroup")
end
def self.down
User.delete_all
end
end
If you want to send a specified action, or all actions from a controller, to a specific shard, use this syntax:
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
around_filter :select_shard
def select_shard(&block)
Octopus.using(:brazil, &block)
end
end
To see the complete list of features and syntax, please check out our Wiki Want to see sample rails applications using octopus features? please check it out: Sharding Example and Replication Example. Also, we have an example that shows how to use Octopus without Rails: Octopus + Sinatra Example.
Occasionally, an application might lose a connection to a database; when this happens, ActiveRecord will raise an exception. Add the following line to your application configuration if you are experiencing this issue:
verify_connection: true
This will tell Octopus to verify the connection before sending the query.
If you want to set a custom connection to a specific model, use the normal syntax establish_connection syntax:
#This class sets its own connection
class CustomConnection < ActiveRecord::Base
establish_connection(:adapter => "mysql", :database => "octopus_shard2")
end
If you want to use specific table names, use the correct syntax for your version of Rails.
class Bacon < ActiveRecord::Base
set_table_name("yummy")
end
class Bacon < ActiveRecord::Base
self.table_name = "yummy"
end
Unfortunately the self.table_name= syntax isn't supported on versions of Rails <= 3.1.
Contributors are welcome! To run the test suite, you need mysql, postgresql and sqlite3 installed. This is what you need to setup your Octopus development environment:
git clone http://github.com/tchandy/octopus.git
cd octopus
bundle install
bundle exec rake db:prepare
bundle exec rake appraisal:install
bundle exec rake spec
This command will run the spec suite for all rails versions supported (Rails 2.3, Rails 3.0 and Rails 3.1). To run our integrations tests inside sample_app, you need to following commands:
cd sample_app
bundle install
cucumber
If you are having issues running the octopus spec suite, verify your database users and passwords match those inside the config files and your permissions are correct.
This project is sponsored by the Ruby Summer of Code, and my mentors Mike Perham and Amit Agarwal.
Copyright (c) Thiago Pradi, released under the MIT license.