Getting started

The Rails SQL Views extension modifies some of the modules in ActiveRecord to add support for SQL Views. It adds the methods create_view and drop_view to the AbstractAdapter so you can use these in migrations. It also modifies the SchemaDumper class to support dumping of create_view logic. Currently the following adapters are supported:

• MySQL
• PostgreSQL (native and pure ruby)
• SQL Server

If you would like to contribute modifications for other adapters please feel free to email them to anthonyeden@gmail.com.

Here’s how to get rolling:

1. Get It

   There are several ways to get the Rails SQL Views extension:

   Install the Gem

   Get to your command line and type sudo gem install rails_sql_views on Linux or OS X or type gem install rails_sql_views on Windows. Rails SQL Views depends on ActiveRecord. If necessary you may have to approve the installation of these dependencies if they are not already installed.

   Download

   You can also download the packages in Zip, Gzip, or Gem format from the ActiveWarehouse files section on RubyForge.

   Plugin

   You can install Rails SQL Views as a plugin if you have the Subversion command line client, with the following command: script/plugin install svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/activewarehouse/rails_sql_views/trunk

   Subversion Checkout

   For the brave you can get the latest code from the Subversion repository. To get the code from the subversion repository you may use the following command line: svn co svn://rubyforge.org/var/svn/activewarehouse/rails_sql_views/trunk.

2. Require Statements

   If you are using the Gem version, then add the following to your config/environment.rb:

     require_gem 'rails_sql_views'
     require 'rails_sql_views'
   

   If you are using the plugin then you don't need to do anything.

3. Use It!

   You can now use the library:

     class CreatePersonView < ActiveRecord::Migration
       def self.up
         create_view :v_people, "select * from people" do |t|
           t.column :id
           t.column :name
           t.column :social_security
         end
       end
   
       def self.down
         drop_view :v_people
       end
     end
   

What's There Now?

Right now the library does the following:

• Adds create_view and drop_view methods to Rails schema code
• Makes ActiveRecord::SchemaDumper view-aware
• Adds a supports_views? abstract method to ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::AbstractAdapter which returns false by default
• Changes the MySQL connection adapter to use SHOW TABLE STATUS rather than SHOW TABLES, so that the tables method returns only tables. Views are returned through the views method
• Implements view support for MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server
• Unit tests included