Composite Primary Keys for ActiveRecords
Summary
ActiveRecords infamously doesn’t support composite primary keys. This gem, composite_primary_keys, or CPK for short, extends ActiveRecord to support composite keys.
Installation
gem install composite_primary_keys
If you are using Rails add the following to your Gemfile:
gem 'composite_primary_keys', '=x.x.x' (see next section about what verison to use)
Versions
Every major version of ActiveRecord has included numerous internal changes. As a result, CPK has to be rewritten for each version of ActiveRecord. To help keep things straight, here is the mapping:
Version 8.x is designed to work with ActiveRecord 4.2.x
Version 7.x is designed to work with ActiveRecord 4.1.x
Version 6.x is designed to work with ActiveRecord 4.0.x
Version 5.x is designed to work with ActiveRecord 3.2.x
Version 4.x is designed to work with ActiveRecord 3.1.x
Run the following command to list available versions:
gem list composite_primary_keys -ra
The basics
A model with composite primary keys is defined like this:
class Membership < ActiveRecord::Base
self.primary_keys = :user_id, :group_id
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :group
has_many :statuses, :class_name => 'MembershipStatus', :foreign_key => [:user_id, :group_id]
end
Note the addition of the line:
self.primary_keys = :user_id, :group_id
A model associated with a composite key model is defined like this:
class MembershipStatus < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :membership, :foreign_key => [:user_id, :group_id]
end
That is, associations can include composite keys too. All Rails association types are supported. Nice.
Usage
Once you’ve created your models to specify composite primary keys (such as the Membership class) and associations (such as MembershipStatus#membership), you can uses them like any normal model with associations.
But first, lets check out our primary keys.
MembershipStatus.primary_key # => "id" # normal single key
Membership.primary_key # => [:user_id, :group_id] # composite keys
Membership.primary_key.to_s # => "user_id,group_id"
Now we want to be able to find instances using the same syntax we always use for ActiveRecords…
MembershipStatus.find(1) # single id returns single instance
=> <MembershipStatus:0x392a8c8 @attributes={"id"=>"1", "status"=>"Active"}>
Membership.find([1,1]) # composite ids returns single instance
=> <Membership:0x39218b0 @attributes={"user_id"=>"1", "group_id"=>"1"}>
Notice the use of an array to specify the composite key values.
NOTE - API CHANGE. CPK Version 6.x and earlier used to allow composite keys to be listed out like this:
Membership.find(1,1)
This usage is no longer supported.
Databases
CPK supports the following databases:
* PostgreSQL
* MySQL
* MariaDB
* Oracle
* DB2
* SQLite
* SQLServer
Tests
Travis build status: <img src=“https://travis-ci.org/composite-primary-keys/composite_primary_keys.svg” alt=“Build Status” />
See test/README_tests.rdoc for more information about running tests.
Questions, Discussion and Contributions
For help please visit github.com/composite-primary-keys/composite_primary_keys.
Author
First version was written by Dr Nic Williams.
Maintained by Charlie Savage
Contributions by many!