Picky 2.2.0 Tweet

This is a post in the Picky series on its workings.

Picky 2.2.0 will be released shortly.

What is good and new?

• Breaking API change (Please read this if you already have Picky running)
• More flexible sources (This is the cool stuff)
• rake search is now picky search
• Uses ActiveRecord/ActiveSupport 3.0

Breaking API change

2.2.0 will introduce an API change that will break your existing, pre-2.2.0 server configuration.

Instead of as second parameter, the data source is now passed in as an option, or called inside the configuration block.

The old style:

Index::Memory.new :users, your_data_source do
  category :name, similarity: Similarity::DoubleMetaphone.new(3)
  category :age
end

has now become the

new style:

Index::Memory.new :users, source: your_data_source do
  category :name, similarity: Similarity::DoubleMetaphone.new(3)
  category :age
end

OR

Index::Memory.new :users do
  source   your_data_source
  category :name, similarity: Similarity::DoubleMetaphone.new(3)
  category :age
end

Why?

The old style was actually more correct, since an index needs a data source. But I never really got friends with it, since it looked so unwieldy, especially when you have a “long” data source, like

Sources::CSV.new(:abra, :ca, :dabra, file: 'some/file/that/is/somewhere.csv')

The new style is much cleaner to look at. And Picky will tell you if you forgot the data source as early as possible.

If you use the old style config, Picky will tell you how you need to update your config on server restart. But still, sorry about the breaking change!

Flexible sources

We’ve completely rewritten the sources.

Before 2.2.0, the data source needed to be an object that responds to the #harvest method.

In 2.2.0, it can be any object responding to the #each method, if that method returns objects that at least respond to the #id method and to any methods specified by the category method.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say we have some monkeys that we’d like to index.

class Monkey
  attr_reader :id, :name, :color
  def initialize id, name, color
    @id, @name, @color = id, name, color
  end
end

We’ll create three monkeys and save them in an array:

monkeys = [
  Monkey.new(1, 'pete', 'red'),
  Monkey.new(2, 'joey', 'green'),
  Monkey.new(3, 'hans', 'blue')
]

Then, since an Array has the #each method, you can index it:

Index::Memory.new :monkeys do
  source   monkeys
  category :name
  category :couleur, :from => :color # The couleur category will take its data from the #color method.
end

Since each monkey has an #id, a #name, and a #color method, Picky will happily index the monkeys for you. Note that the couleur category uses the from option to define from where in the source it takes its data from.

Hmmmm… id method? You’re probably thinking the same thing as I.

MongoMapper, the new ActiveRecord and others use a fluid style interface (see last post), whose proxies support #each, and the yielded objects support #id and various methods!

So this becomes possible:

# For completeness:
#
class Book < ActiveRecord::Base; end
Book.establish_connection YAML.load(File.open('app/db.yml'))

Index::Memory.new :books do
  source   Book.order('title ASC')
  category :id
  category :title
  category :author
  category :year
end

See the first line in the index config block?

Book.order('title ASC')

This passes the AR proxy as source to the books index. Since it provides a #each method, and the yielded objects support #id etc., Picky will index all books in a title ASC order.

I love it!

Note that the old style sources still work. And for ranged_category-s, it is still necessary to use the old style sources. We’ll be working on that, but for the near future, use the old style sources for range/area/volume searches.

rake search → picky search

See the last post.

Since rake search was project specific, but its functionality is actually URL specific, I’ve deprecated the rake task (it will tell you so), and created picky search that you can use.

AR 3.0 / AS 3.0

In other news, Picky now uses AR 3.0 / AS 3.0.

In your existing Gemfile, please update the line

gem 'activerecord',  '~> 2.3.8', :require => 'active_record'

to

gem 'activesupport', '~> 3.0', :require => 'active_support/core_ext'
gem 'activerecord',  '~> 3.0', :require => 'active_record'

Thanks!

Conclusion

So we’ve seen

1. that the API broke a little.
2. that a new group of data sources is available.
3. that rake search is now picky search.
4. that Picky now uses AR 3.0 / AS 3.0.

Hope you learnt something new!

Next Picky: Integration Testing

Share

Tweet

Previous Picky Data Sources: Next Steps

Comments?