Atomically archive object trees in your activerecord models.
We had the problem that acts_as_paranoid and similar plugins/gems always work on a record by record basis and made it very difficult to restore records atomically (or archive them, for that matter).
Because the archive and unarchive methods are in transactions, and every archival record involved gets the same archive number upon archiving, you can easily restore or remove an entire set of records without having to worry about partial deletion or restoration.
Additionally, other plugins generally screw with how
destroy
/delete
work. We don't because we actually want to be able
to destroy records.
Rails 3.2+ (maybe 3.1?)
gem install acts_as_archival
Rails 3.0x:
rails plugin install http://github.com/expectedbehavior/acts_as_archival.git -r rails3.0x
Rails 2:
script/plugin install http://github.com/expectedbehavior/acts_as_archival.git -r rails2
Any models you want to be archival should have the columns
archive_number
(String) and archived_at
(DateTime).
i.e. script/generate migration AddAAAToPost archive_number:string archived_at:datetime
Any dependent-destroy objects connected to an AAA model will be archived with its parent.
class Hole < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_archival
has_many :moles, :dependent => :destroy
end
class Mole < ActiveRecord::Base
acts_as_archival
end
>> Hole.archived.size # => 0
>> Hole.is_archival? # => true
>> h = Hole.create
>> Hole.unarchived.size # => 1
>> h.is_archival? # => true
>> h.archived? # => false
>> h.muskrats.create
>> h.archive # archive hole and muskrat
>> h.archive_number # => 8c9f03f9d....
>> h.muskrats.first.archive_number # => 8c9f03f9d....
>> h.archived? # => 8c9f03f9d....
>> Hole.archived.size # => 1
>> Hole.unarchived.size # => 0
>> h.unarchive
>> Hole.archived.size # => 0
>> Hole.unarchived.size # => 1
- This will only work on associations that are dependent destroy. It should be trival to change that or make it optional.
- It will only work for Rails 2.2 and up, because we are using
named_scope
/scope
. You can check out permanent records for a way to conditionally add the functionality to older Rails installations. - This will only work (well) on databases with transactions (mysql, postgres, etc.).
Because this plugin makes use of transactions we're testing it on MySQL instead of the more convenient sqlite. Running the tests should be as easy as:
bundle
test/script/db_setup # makes the databases with the correct permissions (for mySQL)
rake
It would be cool if someone could check if this thing works on postgres and if not, submit a patch / let us know about it!
ActsAsParanoid and PermanentRecords were both inspirations for this
http://github.com/technoweenie/acts_as_paranoid
http://github.com/fastestforward/permanent_records
- Joel Meador
- Michael Kuehl
- Matthew Gordon
- Vojtech Salbaba
- David Jones
- Dave Woodward
Thanks!
Copyright (c) 2009-2012 Expected Behavior, LLC, released under the MIT license