redis-orm

Easy-to-use object relational mapping for Redis.

Disclaimer

The gem is intended to be similar to ActiveRecord; however, it's not identical. Most notably, a lot of options that ActiveRecord gives you are currently missing from redis-orm. This is mostly because I'm just one guy, and I have other projects I'd like to make some headway on. As time goes on, expect redis-orm to become more and more ActiveRecord-like. The end goal is to produce a Redis library that is a drop-in replacement for ActiveRecord in a Rails 3 project (but that is also usable outside of Rails).

And by the way, I'm totally accepting pull requests. Hint, hint.

Requiring

Add it to your Gemfile if you're using one. If necessary, require the redis-orm libraries like so:

require 'redis-orm'

# -or-

require 'redis/orm'

...whichever one strikes your fancy.

Usage

Inherit from Redis::ORM as if you were inheriting from ActiveRecord::Base:

class User < Redis::ORM
  # more code here!
end

At this point your Users can be created, saved, and so forth. It might be helpful to define attributes on the model, however, or else the model will be quite useless indeed!

attributes

Instead of defining them in a schema file or set of migrations, redis-orm defines attributes directly within the model:

class User < Redis::ORM
  attribute :login
  attribute :password
end

Attributes can have any value that can be serialized. The default serializer is Marshal, but more on that later.

Optionally, you can give attributes a default value. If not specified, the default value is implicitly nil.

class Post < Redis::ORM
  attribute :subject, "(No subject.)"
  attribute :body
end

Like ActiveRecord, redis-orm defines created_at and updated_at attributes for you automatically, so you don't need to worry about these. Additionally, the id field is created and managed for you.

relationships

There are 3 core relationships defined by redis-orm: belongs_to, has_one and has_many. They function essentially similar to relations of the same name in ActiveRecord, but it's important to keep in mind that they are specifically designed for Redis, and they have some minor differences.

class User < Redis::ORM
  has_many :posts, :relation => :user
  has_one :profile, :relation => :user
end

class Post < Redis::ORM
  belongs_to :user
end

class Profile < Redis::ORM
  belongs_to :user
end

As shown above, you should usually follow your has_one and has_many directives with a relation option, which matches the corresponding belongs_to relation in the other models. Think of it as the foreign_key option in ActiveRecord. This option is not strictly required and redis-orm will work fine without it, but you may have problems looking up the reverse relations (e.g. the belongs_to part) without it.

Alternatively, you can specify a relation option for the belongs_to directive, instead:

class User < Redis::ORM
  has_many :posts
  has_one :profile
end

class Post < Redis::ORM
  belongs_to :user, :relation => :posts
end

class Profile < Redis::ORM
  belongs_to :user, :relation => :profile
end

TODO: A future version of this gem will infer the relation option from the class name if it omitted.

inference

Unlike ActiveRecord, redis-orm does not infer class names from the relation name. You can give any value you like to the relations. During look-up, class names are retrieved from the object's ID, which (as mentioned) is already maintained for you. So in most cases, you should not have to care about the object's class at all. The only caveat is, all related objects must inherit from Redis::ORM so that they can be looked up and deserialized properly.

validations

The Redis::ORM base class automatically pulls in ActiveModel::Validations, so you should look at those. In addition, a Redis-specific validates_uniqueness_of validation has been added, and can be used thusly:

class User < Redis::ORM
  attribute :login
  
  validates_uniqueness_of :login
end

Actions

Now we get to discuss things you can actually do with your Redis-based models!

creating and saving records

You can instantiate a new record by simply calling new, just like any Ruby object. Supply an optional hash of attributes:

new_user = User.new()                        #=> a user with no attributes
new_user = User.new(:login => "Colin")       #=> a user named Colin, but with no password
new_user = User.new(:profile => Profile.new) #=> a user with a profile (it has_one, remember?)

So far, none of these records have been saved. Let's do that now:

if new_user.save
  # save successful, do something
else
  # save failed, let's get the error messages
  puts new_user.errors.full_messages
end

The save method returns true if the save was successful, false otherwise. If the save failed, the model's errors object will have been populated.

The errors object comes straight from ActiveModel, so using it is identical to that of ActiveRecord.

You can call save! instead of save if you prefer an actual exception to be raised if the record couldn't be saved. The exception will include the full error messages, so you will know if the save failed due to validations.

You can also make use of the ActiveRecord-esque create method:

new_user = User.create(:login => 'Colin')

The model instance will be returned whether the record was successfully saved or not. If you would prefer an error to be raised upon failing validations, you can call create! instead.

finding records

Finding an existing record is done like so:

user = User.find('id_of_user')

If the record could not be found, nil will be returned.

Dynamic find_by_* methods are not supported at this time.

destroying records

Destroying records is easy:

user = User.find('id_of_user')
user.destroy

To destroy all records of a given type, call destroy_all on the model class:

User.destroy_all

Callbacks

The following callbacks are supported, and are used just like their ActiveRecord counterparts:

• before_initialize
• after_initialize
• around_initialize
• before_save
• after_save
• around_save
• before_create
• after_create
• around_create
• before_update
• after_update
• around_update
• before_destroy
• after_destroy
• around_destroy

In addition, you can register behavior to happen during some actions, specifically saving and destroying:

class User < Redis::ORM
  within_save_block :save_extra_stuff
  within_destroy_block :delete_extra_stuff
  
  def save_extra_stuff
    # hardcore low-level database action
  end
  
  def delete_extra_stuff
    # crazy low-level database madness
  end
end

You can use these callbacks to perform commands directly upon the Redis database connection, and they will be rolled into the corresponding save and destroy transaction blocks. This way, if the saving or destroying of the model should fail at any point during the save or destroy process respectively, the entire transaction will be rolled back and you can rest assured that you haven't needlessly altered the database beyond recognition.

Configuration

connection

You can set the host and port for Redis:

Redis.host = 'localhost'
Redis.port = 3200

If you already have an active connection, however, these changes will not take effect. You'll need to replace the connection directly:

Redis.connection = Redis.new(:host => 'localhost', :port => 3000)

serializer

By default, Redis serializes the attributes using Marshal. If you would prefer to store data in some other format, simply replace Redis::ORM.serializer with your choice. Anything that responds to #dump and #load will work (JSON, YAML, etc):

Redis::ORM.serializer = YAML

Obviously, you can use your own custom serializer just as easily. Just pass in an object that returns a string for #dump(object) and an object for #load(string) and you're good to go.

It's worth noting that there can only be one serializer for all models. It's also worth noting that it's a Bad Idea to switch serializers once you've got a database full of data. If you need to switch, for instance, from JSON to YAML serialization, you'll need to come up with a migration scheme yourself.