Models

Model Declaration

To create a model with NoBrainer, simply include the NoBrainer::Document mixin in your class as such:

class User
  include NoBrainer::Document
end

There is no migrations needed to use the model since NoBrainer creates the required tables for you by default.

The default table name is class.name.tableize.gsub('/', '__'). You may change the table name as described in the Multi Tenancy section.

Single Table Inheritance

To use polymorphic models with single table inheritance, simply inherit your classes. Example:

class Admin < User
end

NoBrainer uses a _type attribute in the subclass documents to be able to query and instantiate the proper classes.

Note that when using Rails, you might have to use require_dependency to ensure that all subclasses are loaded. See more in the Rails guide, Autoloading and STI.

Polymorphic Associations

Starting with version 0.43.0, NoBrainer supports the Ruby On Rails polymorphic associations which stores the remote model name in a _type column and the remote model ID in a _id column so that you can link any models to the polymorphic association.

class Picture
  include NoBrainer::Document

  belongs_to :imageable, polymorphic: true
end

This will add a imageable_type and imageable_id columns to the model and NoBrainer will store the name and ID when assigning a model instance to that association.

Here is an example of a models using the polymorphic association from the Picture class :

class Employee
  include NoBrainer::Document

  has_many :pictures, as: :imageable
end

class Product
  include NoBrainer::Document

  has_many :pictures, as: :imageable
end

You can retrieve the Employee or Product pictures with @instance.pictures where @instance is an instance of the Employee or Product classes. Similarly, you can retrieve the Picture owner with @instance.imageable where @instance is an instance of a Picture document.

Of course, unlike with ActiveRecord, you don’t need any migration script in order to add the new columns (NoBrainer do it for you automatically), but you need to create the automatically created index on the new fields using NoBrainer.sync_indexes or rails nobrainer:sync_indexes.

See the Ruby On Rails documentation Polymorphic Associations to see more.

Reflection

Sometimes it’s useful to go through all the models to do something fancy. The list of models can be retrieved with NoBrainer::Document.all. When using polymorphism, note that subclasses are not returned, only root classes.