Nativepluck

Nativepluck is a high-performance alternative to ActiveRecord's pluck when using PostgreSQL. Via native PostgreSQL data type casting, we achieve significant memory and time savings.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'nativepluck'

And then execute:

    $ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

    $ gem install nativepluck

Usage

• You can use nativepluck just like you use pluck , as in <Model>.limit(10).nativepluck(:id,:name)
  

• You can also set in your config/initializers/nativepluck.rb , Nativepluck.set_override_pluck true and we'll override pluck with nativepluck
  No changes needed on your side, completely transparent
  

• You can take an existing ActiveRecord query method call chain, for example:
  <Model>.where('id >= 21').limit(100).joins(:some_association_to_another_model).pluck(:id)
  Change the pluck call to select and use it as the argument to the nativepluck module method:
  Nativepluck.nativepluck(<Model>.where('id >= 21').limit(100).joins(:some_association_to_another_model).select(:id))
  Internally, this method calls to_sql on the supplied ActiveRecord::Relation instance and submits the generated SQL query to the database. Again, native PostgreSQL typecasting is performed on the query results.
  

• You can also use a raw SQL string argument in the module method, e.g.,
  Nativepluck.nativepluck('SELECT models.id FROM models JOIN some_other_models ON some_other_models.model_id = models.id WHERE models.id > 21 LIMIT 100').

Benchmarks

Due to GitLab not rendering CSV properly we also host the CSV results at GitHub

Memory Benchmarks

To run the benchmarks use: BenchMarks::Memory::benchmark(write_to_file: true|false, row_limit: nil|integer)

• We're seeing up to ~50X less object allocations for integer columns
  

Memory allocation benchmark

• Benchmark code test/dummy/test/benchmarks/memory_benchmarks.rb
• Benchmark CSV test/dummy/memory_report.csv

Allocated Objects by Class Benchmark

• Benchmark code test/dummy/test/benchmarks/memory_benchmarks.rb
• Benchmark CSV by objects test/dummy/by_attributes_objects.csv
• Benchmark CSV by memory test/dummy/by_attributes_memory.csv

RunTime Benchmarks

To run the benchmarks use: BenchMarks::RunTime::benchmark

• Benchmark code test/dummy/test/benchmarks/runtime_benchmarks.rb
  
• We're seeing up to ~4X faster run-time when plucking DateTime columns and ~1.5X on integer columns
• Full results at test/dummy/test/benchmarks/runtime.csv

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the Apache 2.0 License.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitLab at https://gitlab.com/nativepluck/nativepluck. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

Code of Conduct

Everyone interacting in the Nativepluck project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms and mailing lists is expected to follow the code of conduct.