Active Record – Object-relational mapping in Rails

Active Record connects classes to relational database tables to establish an almost zero-configuration persistence layer for applications. The library provides a base class that, when subclassed, sets up a mapping between the new class and an existing table in the database. In the context of an application, these classes are commonly referred to as models. Models can also be connected to other models; this is done by defining associations.

Active Record relies heavily on naming in that it uses class and association names to establish mappings between respective database tables and foreign key columns. Although these mappings can be defined explicitly, it’s recommended to follow naming conventions, especially when getting started with the library.

You can read more about Active Record in the Active Record Basics guide.

A short rundown of some of the major features:

• Automated mapping between classes and tables, attributes and columns.

  class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  end
  

  The Product class is automatically mapped to the table named “products”, which might look like this:

  CREATE TABLE products (
    id bigint NOT NULL auto_increment,
    name varchar(255),
    PRIMARY KEY  (id)
  );
  

  This would also define the following accessors: Product#name and Product#name=(new_name).

  Learn more

• Associations between objects defined by simple class methods.

  class Firm < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many   :clients
    has_one    :account
    belongs_to :conglomerate
  end
  

  Learn more

• Aggregations of value objects.

  class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
    composed_of :balance, class_name: 'Money',
                mapping: %w(balance amount)
    composed_of :address,
                mapping: [%w(address_street street), %w(address_city city)]
  end
  

  Learn more

• Validation rules that can differ for new or existing objects.

  class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
    validates :subdomain, :name, :email_address, :password, presence: true
    validates :subdomain, uniqueness: true
    validates :terms_of_service, acceptance: true, on: :create
    validates :password, :email_address, confirmation: true, on: :create
  end
  

  Learn more

• Callbacks available for the entire life cycle (instantiation, saving, destroying, validating, etc.).

  class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
    before_destroy :invalidate_payment_plan
    # the `invalidate_payment_plan` method gets called just before Person#destroy
  end
  

  Learn more

• Inheritance hierarchies.

  class Company < ActiveRecord::Base; end
  class Firm < Company; end
  class Client < Company; end
  class PriorityClient < Client; end
  

  Learn more

• Transactions.

  # Database transaction
  Account.transaction do
    david.withdrawal(100)
    mary.deposit(100)
  end
  

  Learn more

• Reflections on columns, associations, and aggregations.

  reflection = Firm.reflect_on_association(:clients)
  reflection.klass # => Client (class)
  Firm.columns # Returns an array of column descriptors for the firms table
  

  Learn more

• Database abstraction through simple adapters.

  # connect to SQLite3
  ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(adapter: 'sqlite3', database: 'dbfile.sqlite3')
  
  # connect to MySQL with authentication
  ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
    adapter:  'mysql2',
    host:     'localhost',
    username: 'me',
    password: 'secret',
    database: 'activerecord'
  )
  

  Learn more and read about the built-in support for MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite3.

• Logging support for Log4r and Logger.

  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = ActiveSupport::Logger.new(STDOUT)
  ActiveRecord::Base.logger = Log4r::Logger.new('Application Log')
  

• Database agnostic schema management with Migrations.

  class AddSystemSettings < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.2]
    def up
      create_table :system_settings do |t|
        t.string  :name
        t.string  :label
        t.text    :value
        t.string  :type
        t.integer :position
      end
  
      SystemSetting.create name: 'notice', label: 'Use notice?', value: 1
    end
  
    def down
      drop_table :system_settings
    end
  end
  

  Learn more

Philosophy

Active Record is an implementation of the object-relational mapping (ORM) pattern by the same name described by Martin Fowler:

“An object that wraps a row in a database table or view, encapsulates the database access, and adds domain logic on that data.”

Active Record attempts to provide a coherent wrapper as a solution for the inconvenience that is object-relational mapping. The prime directive for this mapping has been to minimize the amount of code needed to build a real-world domain model. This is made possible by relying on a number of conventions that make it easy for Active Record to infer complex relations and structures from a minimal amount of explicit direction.

Convention over Configuration:

• No XML files!

• Lots of reflection and run-time extension

• Magic is not inherently a bad word

Admit the Database:

• Lets you drop down to SQL for odd cases and performance

• Doesn’t attempt to duplicate or replace data definitions

Download and installation

The latest version of Active Record can be installed with RubyGems:

$ gem install activerecord

Source code can be downloaded as part of the Rails project on GitHub:

• github.com/rails/rails/tree/main/activerecord

License

Active Record is released under the MIT license:

• opensource.org/licenses/MIT

Support

API documentation is at:

• api.rubyonrails.org

Bug reports for the Ruby on Rails project can be filed here:

• github.com/rails/rails/issues

Feature requests should be discussed on the rails-core mailing list here:

• discuss.rubyonrails.org/c/rubyonrails-core