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data/guides/source/active_record_basics.md

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-Active Record Basics
-====================
-
-This guide is an introduction to Active Record.
-
-After reading this guide, you will know:
-
-* What Object Relational Mapping and Active Record are and how they are used in
-  Rails.
-* How Active Record fits into the Model-View-Controller paradigm.
-* How to use Active Record models to manipulate data stored in a relational
-  database.
-* Active Record schema naming conventions.
-* The concepts of database migrations, validations and callbacks.
-
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-What is Active Record?
-----------------------
-
-Active Record is the M in [MVC](getting_started.html#the-mvc-architecture) - the
-model - which is the layer of the system responsible for representing business
-data and logic. Active Record facilitates the creation and use of business
-objects whose data requires persistent storage to a database. It is an
-implementation of the Active Record pattern which itself is a description of an
-Object Relational Mapping system.
-
-### The Active Record Pattern
-
-[Active Record was described by Martin Fowler](http://www.martinfowler.com/eaaCatalog/activeRecord.html)
-in his book _Patterns of Enterprise Application Architecture_. In
-Active Record, objects carry both persistent data and behavior which
-operates on that data. Active Record takes the opinion that ensuring
-data access logic as part of the object will educate users of that
-object on how to write to and read from the database.
-
-### Object Relational Mapping
-
-Object-Relational Mapping, commonly referred to as its abbreviation ORM, is
-a technique that connects the rich objects of an application to tables in
-a relational database management system. Using ORM, the properties and
-relationships of the objects in an application can be easily stored and
-retrieved from a database without writing SQL statements directly and with less
-overall database access code.
-
-### Active Record as an ORM Framework
-
-Active Record gives us several mechanisms, the most important being the ability
-to:
-
-* Represent models and their data.
-* Represent associations between these models.
-* Represent inheritance hierarchies through related models.
-* Validate models before they get persisted to the database.
-* Perform database operations in an object-oriented fashion.
-
-Convention over Configuration in Active Record
-----------------------------------------------
-
-When writing applications using other programming languages or frameworks, it
-may be necessary to write a lot of configuration code. This is particularly true
-for ORM frameworks in general. However, if you follow the conventions adopted by
-Rails, you'll need to write very little configuration (in some case no
-configuration at all) when creating Active Record models. The idea is that if
-you configure your applications in the very same way most of the time then this
-should be the default way. Thus, explicit configuration would be needed
-only in those cases where you can't follow the standard convention.
-
-### Naming Conventions
-
-By default, Active Record uses some naming conventions to find out how the
-mapping between models and database tables should be created. Rails will
-pluralize your class names to find the respective database table. So, for
-a class `Book`, you should have a database table called **books**. The Rails
-pluralization mechanisms are very powerful, being capable to pluralize (and
-singularize) both regular and irregular words. When using class names composed
-of two or more words, the model class name should follow the Ruby conventions,
-using the CamelCase form, while the table name must contain the words separated
-by underscores. Examples:
-
-* Database Table - Plural with underscores separating words (e.g., `book_clubs`).
-* Model Class - Singular with the first letter of each word capitalized (e.g.,
-`BookClub`).
-
-| Model / Class    | Table / Schema |
-| ---------------- | -------------- |
-| `Article`        | `articles`     |
-| `LineItem`       | `line_items`   |
-| `Deer`           | `deers`        |
-| `Mouse`          | `mice`         |
-| `Person`         | `people`       |
-
-
-### Schema Conventions
-
-Active Record uses naming conventions for the columns in database tables,
-depending on the purpose of these columns.
-
-* **Foreign keys** - These fields should be named following the pattern
-  `singularized_table_name_id` (e.g., `item_id`, `order_id`). These are the
-  fields that Active Record will look for when you create associations between
-  your models.
-* **Primary keys** - By default, Active Record will use an integer column named
-  `id` as the table's primary key. When using [Active Record
-  Migrations](migrations.html) to create your tables, this column will be
-  automatically created.
-
-There are also some optional column names that will add additional features
-to Active Record instances:
-
-* `created_at` - Automatically gets set to the current date and time when the
-  record is first created.
-* `updated_at` - Automatically gets set to the current date and time whenever
-  the record is updated.
-* `lock_version` - Adds [optimistic
-  locking](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Locking.html) to
-  a model.
-* `type` - Specifies that the model uses [Single Table
-  Inheritance](http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#class-ActiveRecord::Base-label-Single+table+inheritance).
-* `(association_name)_type` - Stores the type for
-  [polymorphic associations](association_basics.html#polymorphic-associations).
-* `(table_name)_count` - Used to cache the number of belonging objects on
-  associations. For example, a `comments_count` column in a `Articles` class that
-  has many instances of `Comment` will cache the number of existent comments
-  for each article.
-
-NOTE: While these column names are optional, they are in fact reserved by Active Record. Steer clear of reserved keywords unless you want the extra functionality. For example, `type` is a reserved keyword used to designate a table using Single Table Inheritance (STI). If you are not using STI, try an analogous keyword like "context", that may still accurately describe the data you are modeling.
-
-Creating Active Record Models
------------------------------
-
-It is very easy to create Active Record models. All you have to do is to
-subclass the `ActiveRecord::Base` class and you're good to go:
-
-```ruby
-class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
-end
-```
-
-This will create a `Product` model, mapped to a `products` table at the
-database. By doing this you'll also have the ability to map the columns of each
-row in that table with the attributes of the instances of your model. Suppose
-that the `products` table was created using an SQL sentence like:
-
-```sql
-CREATE TABLE products (
-   id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
-   name varchar(255),
-   PRIMARY KEY  (id)
-);
-```
-
-Following the table schema above, you would be able to write code like the
-following:
-
-```ruby
-p = Product.new
-p.name = "Some Book"
-puts p.name # "Some Book"
-```
-
-Overriding the Naming Conventions
----------------------------------
-
-What if you need to follow a different naming convention or need to use your
-Rails application with a legacy database? No problem, you can easily override
-the default conventions.
-
-You can use the `ActiveRecord::Base.table_name=` method to specify the table
-name that should be used:
-
-```ruby
-class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
-  self.table_name = "my_products"
-end
-```
-
-If you do so, you will have to define manually the class name that is hosting
-the fixtures (my_products.yml) using the `set_fixture_class` method in your test
-definition:
-
-```ruby
-class ProductTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
-  set_fixture_class my_products: Product
-  fixtures :my_products
-  ...
-end
-```
-
-It's also possible to override the column that should be used as the table's
-primary key using the `ActiveRecord::Base.primary_key=` method:
-
-```ruby
-class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
-  self.primary_key = "product_id"
-end
-```
-
-CRUD: Reading and Writing Data
-------------------------------
-
-CRUD is an acronym for the four verbs we use to operate on data: **C**reate,
-**R**ead, **U**pdate and **D**elete. Active Record automatically creates methods
-to allow an application to read and manipulate data stored within its tables.
-
-### Create
-
-Active Record objects can be created from a hash, a block or have their
-attributes manually set after creation. The `new` method will return a new
-object while `create` will return the object and save it to the database.
-
-For example, given a model `User` with attributes of `name` and `occupation`,
-the `create` method call will create and save a new record into the database:
-
-```ruby
-user = User.create(name: "David", occupation: "Code Artist")
-```
-
-Using the `new` method, an object can be instantiated without being saved:
-
-```ruby
-user = User.new
-user.name = "David"
-user.occupation = "Code Artist"
-```
-
-A call to `user.save` will commit the record to the database.
-
-Finally, if a block is provided, both `create` and `new` will yield the new
-object to that block for initialization:
-
-```ruby
-user = User.new do |u|
-  u.name = "David"
-  u.occupation = "Code Artist"
-end
-```
-
-### Read
-
-Active Record provides a rich API for accessing data within a database. Below
-are a few examples of different data access methods provided by Active Record.
-
-```ruby
-# return a collection with all users
-users = User.all
-```
-
-```ruby
-# return the first user
-user = User.first
-```
-
-```ruby
-# return the first user named David
-david = User.find_by(name: 'David')
-```
-
-```ruby
-# find all users named David who are Code Artists and sort by created_at in reverse chronological order
-users = User.where(name: 'David', occupation: 'Code Artist').order(created_at: :desc)
-```
-
-You can learn more about querying an Active Record model in the [Active Record
-Query Interface](active_record_querying.html) guide.
-
-### Update
-
-Once an Active Record object has been retrieved, its attributes can be modified
-and it can be saved to the database.
-
-```ruby
-user = User.find_by(name: 'David')
-user.name = 'Dave'
-user.save
-```
-
-A shorthand for this is to use a hash mapping attribute names to the desired
-value, like so:
-
-```ruby
-user = User.find_by(name: 'David')
-user.update(name: 'Dave')
-```
-
-This is most useful when updating several attributes at once. If, on the other
-hand, you'd like to update several records in bulk, you may find the
-`update_all` class method useful:
-
-```ruby
-User.update_all "max_login_attempts = 3, must_change_password = 'true'"
-```
-
-### Delete
-
-Likewise, once retrieved an Active Record object can be destroyed which removes
-it from the database.
-
-```ruby
-user = User.find_by(name: 'David')
-user.destroy
-```
-
-Validations
------------
-
-Active Record allows you to validate the state of a model before it gets written
-into the database. There are several methods that you can use to check your
-models and validate that an attribute value is not empty, is unique and not
-already in the database, follows a specific format and many more.
-
-Validation is a very important issue to consider when persisting to the database, so
-the methods `save` and `update` take it into account when
-running: they return `false` when validation fails and they didn't actually
-perform any operation on the database. All of these have a bang counterpart (that
-is, `save!` and `update!`), which are stricter in that
-they raise the exception `ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid` if validation fails.
-A quick example to illustrate:
-
-```ruby
-class User < ActiveRecord::Base
-  validates :name, presence: true
-end
-
-user = User.new
-user.save  # => false
-user.save! # => ActiveRecord::RecordInvalid: Validation failed: Name can't be blank
-```
-
-You can learn more about validations in the [Active Record Validations
-guide](active_record_validations.html).
-
-Callbacks
----------
-
-Active Record callbacks allow you to attach code to certain events in the
-life-cycle of your models. This enables you to add behavior to your models by
-transparently executing code when those events occur, like when you create a new
-record, update it, destroy it and so on. You can learn more about callbacks in
-the [Active Record Callbacks guide](active_record_callbacks.html).
-
-Migrations
-----------
-
-Rails provides a domain-specific language for managing a database schema called
-migrations. Migrations are stored in files which are executed against any
-database that Active Record supports using `rake`. Here's a migration that
-creates a table:
-
-```ruby
-class CreatePublications < ActiveRecord::Migration
-  def change
-    create_table :publications do |t|
-      t.string :title
-      t.text :description
-      t.references :publication_type
-      t.integer :publisher_id
-      t.string :publisher_type
-      t.boolean :single_issue
-
-      t.timestamps null: false
-    end
-    add_index :publications, :publication_type_id
-  end
-end
-```
-
-Rails keeps track of which files have been committed to the database and
-provides rollback features. To actually create the table, you'd run `rake db:migrate`
-and to roll it back, `rake db:rollback`.
-
-Note that the above code is database-agnostic: it will run in MySQL,
-PostgreSQL, Oracle and others. You can learn more about migrations in the
-[Active Record Migrations guide](migrations.html).