[ruby-on-rails] How to use concerns in Rails 4

I have been reading about using model concerns to skin-nize fat models as well as DRY up your model codes. Here is an explanation with examples:

1) DRYing up model codes

Consider a Article model, a Event model and a Comment model. An article or an event has many comments. A comment belongs to either Article or Event.

Traditionally, the models may look like this:

Comment Model:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end

Article Model:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments, as: :commentable 

  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  def self.least_commented
   #return the article with least number of comments
  end
end

Event Model

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments, as: :commentable 

  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  def self.least_commented
   #returns the event with least number of comments
  end
end

As we can notice, there is a significant piece of code common to both Event and Article. Using concerns we can extract this common code in a separate module Commentable.

For this create a commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns.

module Commentable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    has_many :comments, as: :commentable
  end

  # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def least_commented
      #returns the article/event which has the least number of comments
    end
  end
end

And now your models look like this :

Comment Model:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end

Article Model:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
end

Event Model:

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
end

2) Skin-nizing Fat Models.

Consider a Event model. A event has many attenders and comments.

Typically, the event model might look like this

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base   
  has_many :comments
  has_many :attenders


  def find_first_comment
    # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  end

  def find_comments_with_word(word)
    # for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
  end 

  def self.least_commented
    # finds the event which has the least number of comments
  end

  def self.most_attended
    # returns the event with most number of attendes
  end

  def has_attendee(attendee_id)
    # returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
  end
end

Models with many associations and otherwise have tendency to accumulate more and more code and become unmanageable. Concerns provide a way to skin-nize fat modules making them more modularized and easy to understand.

The above model can be refactored using concerns as below: Create a attendable.rb and commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns/event folder

attendable.rb

module Attendable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do 
    has_many :attenders
  end

  def has_attender(attender_id)
    # returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def most_attended
      # returns the event with most number of attendes
    end
  end
end

commentable.rb

module Commentable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do 
    has_many :comments
  end

  def find_first_comment
    # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  end

  def find_comments_with_word(word)
    # for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def least_commented
      # finds the event which has the least number of comments
    end
  end
end

And now using Concerns, your Event model reduces to

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
  include Attendable
end

* While using concerns its advisable to go for 'domain' based grouping rather than 'technical' grouping. Domain Based grouping is like 'Commentable', 'Photoable', 'Attendable'. Technical grouping will mean 'ValidationMethods', 'FinderMethods' etc