squares

Squares [*]

A lightweight ORM backed by any hash-like storage. Hand-crafted from a solid piece of pure aircraft-grade Ruby and drawing distilled awesomeness from atmospheric pollutants, its only dependency is you.

Installation Blah, Blah, Blah

I swear, this part of the README just rolled right out of bundle gem squares.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'squares'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install squares

And yeah, I did enjoy typing bundle gem squares. It sounds like something to eat. Now I'm hungry.

Usage

Because you are going to use it.

require 'squares'

Write Models

How come they never write back?

class Person < Squares::Base
  properties :real_name, :age
end

You can also provide a default value if you switch to the property variant:

class Person < Squares::Base
  property :irish?, default: false
  property :eye_color, default: lambda { |person|
    person.irish? ? 'green' : 'brown'
  }
end

Note that defaults which use callbacks (anything that responds to #call) are always applied after defaults which don't use callbacks. Reverse the order of the above two properties, and their defaults would still work.

Bootstrapping

A funny word for "setup & configure". Bootstrapping. Bootstrapping. See? Funny.

Now you can bootstrap ;) your model to a hash-like storage object like so:

people_storage = Redis::Namespace.new(
                   Person.underscore_name,
                   :redis => $redis_connection )

Person.store = people_storage

Or if you just want to use a plain ole in-memory hash:

tom_sellecks_mustache = {}
Soup.store = tom_sellecks_mustache

Squares actually defaults the store to an empty hash, which means if you're ok with in-memory, transient storage (e.g. when writing tests, etc.) you don't have to do any config-- er, bootstrapping ;) at all!

You can setup a bunch of 'em like this:

[Person, Place, SwampThing].each do |model|
  model.store = LevelDB::DB.new("./tmp/#{model.underscore_name}")
end

But it gets even better: the Squares module is an Enumerable which enumerates all the model classes (inheritors of Squares::Base). So you can:

Squares.map &:underscore_name #=> ['person', 'place', 'swamp_thing']

Or better yet:

Squares.each do |model|
  model.store = LevelDB::DB.new './tmp/#{model.underscore_name}'
end

Onward To The Fun

Squares does not auto-generate an :id for each new object --you'll do that and it will be used as the "key" in the hash storage. In the following example, we're creating a new Person and using 'spiderman' as the key:

pete = Person.new('spiderman', real_name: 'Peter Parker', age: 17)
#                 ^^^ key ^^^  ^^^^^^^^^^^ properties ^^^^^^^^^^^
pete.save

Person.has_key? 'spiderman' #=> true
pete.id                     #=> 'spiderman'

When we retrieve an object, it returns an instance of that model:

wallcrawler = Person['spiderman']
wallcrawler = Person.find 'spiderman'      #=> same, shmame.
wallcrawler.class                          #=> Person
wallcrawler.id                             #=> 'spiderman'

And then, of course, you can

wallcrawler.real_name                      #=> 'Peter Parker'
wallcrawler[:real_name]                    #=> 'Peter Parker'
wallcrawler.real_name = 'Petah Pahkah'     #=> Boston's own
wallcrawler[:real_name] = 'Peshmerga Pete' #=> What is this, even?

wallcrawler.changed?                       #=> true
wallcrawler.save                           #=> now it's official

wallcrawler.update_properties(             #=> also aliased as
  real_name: 'Peter Parker'                #   #update_attributes
)

Of course, for some types of storage, the model object has to be serialized and de-serialized when it's stored and retrieved. Squares uses Marshal.dump and Marshal.restore to do that. This means that custom marshalling can be added to your models (see documentation on ruby Marshal).

Where-able Computing

You can use the ActiveRecord-esque .where method with a block to retrieve records for which the block returns true:

Person.where { |p| p.left_handed == true } #=> all the lefties

In this mode, .where is essentially just like .select...which, oh yeah! Squares are enumerable! Yay!

Person.map(&:name) #=> an array containing all the names

But you can also pass a hash to .where and it will do the expected thing:

Person.where( country: 'Latvaria' )  #=> Dr. Doom, I presume?

And if you give .where a series of symbol arguments, it will consider them as properties, and check the truthyness of each:

Person.where( :flying?, :secret_lair )  #=> Superman!

Square Hooks

You can hang a callable (such as a Proc, a Lambda or an instance of class Batman which implements #call) on any of Squares' polished, hand-crafted hooks:

class Hero
  after_initialize do
    tweet "In a world..."
  end
end

Squares supports the following hooks:

• after_initialize
• before/after_create
• after_find (e.g. after .find and also .[])
• before/after_save
• before_destroy (#delete does not trigger this callback)

There are two important things to remember about Squares' hooks: 1) while a hooked callback is in progress, no other hooks will be triggered (i.e. hooks can't fire hooks), and 2) never feed Square Hooks after midnight.

What It Doesn't Do

Much like Wolverine, Squares doesn't do relationships. You'll have to maintain those in your code. If you have an issue with that, leave me an issue, and I'll think about what that might mean.

Squares neither knows nor cares about the type or contents of your model instance's properties. This has consequences.

First, anything you stash had darn well better be marshal-able, or there will be blood on the roller-rink. Or at least errors. Yeah, I've made sure there won't be blood (you're welcome), but watch out for errors. If you run into problems, refer to the documentation on ruby Marshal.

Second, there is no magic-fu for stuff like generating question methods for boolean properties. For example, it doesn't make a #left_handed? method out of your property :left_handed). But hey, you know what you can do? Behold:

class Person
  property :awesome?, default: true #=> What?! is that a "?"
end

Ok, don't interrupt me, I'm selling here...

you = Person.new
you.awesome? #=> true

Of course, Squares doesn't mind how you use #awesome? and the corresponding #awesome= methods:

you.awesome = 'yak hair'
you.awesome? #=> 'yak hair'

or

you.awesome = nil
you.awesome? #=> nil

But hey, who cares, as long as yak hair is truthy?

What's New in 0.3.0

• property defaults can use a callback
• implemented #[] on instances (to access properties)
• #update_properties (i.e. #update_attributes)
• square hooks
• #changed?
• .where accepts a hash, and/or series of properties

You can read in more detail on the 0.3.0 milestone

Contributing

1. Fork it ( https://github.com/joelhelbling/squares/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request