Rails - Mar 2005 - What''s the thinking behind pluralisation?

Hello,

At risk of being named a Troll after the rather heated discussion of earlier
today, I''d like to better understand the thinking behind the design
decision
to pluralise things.  Please note that I am a newbie, and to this newbie,
pluralisation is quite confusing.

I''m going to start from the assumption that pluralisation is a really
good
idea and like so many things in Rails, I simply don''t yet understand
its
subtlety and power.  I''m hoping someone can give me a deeper
understanding
of the magic of pluralisation.

On the surface pluralisation seems to add complexity and rules to Rails,
which generally appears to be a framework designed to reduce complexity and
rules.  Strange.

One of the most confusing things for the Rails beginner (i.e. me) is
constantly asking myself questions like "Why is this pluralised?",
"Am I
meant to be using singular or plural?", "Is this problem caused by the
fact
that something should be plural, or something that should be singular?"
>From an intutive perspective, I would much prefer that Rails did not do
anything that I did not ask it to do, like pluralisation.

In any other development environment I know if I name a database table
"blahwidget", then for the rest of the lifetime of the application I
can
reasonably assume that I will be referring to the blahwidget table.  Under
Rails however, it seems that it may or may not be necessary to refer to it
as blahwidgets, or maybe the table must be called blahwidgets rather than
blahwidget in the first place.  As you can see, it''s confusing to the
uninitiated.  It seems very important to me to be able to assume that an
entire system deals with the blahwidget as-is.  No modifications, no
references to "blahwidgets".

So I guess the question of this email is; "what is it that pluralisation
adds that is so powerful that it justifies adding in the significant
confusion of trying to work out how pluralisation fits into the entire Rails
picture?"

Programming languages and frameworks are complex enough without bringing in
the even more complex elements of the English language like pluralisation.

Could someone please set me straight?  I''d like to hear that it is much
easier to understand than I think, and that it adds enormous value to Rails.

And no I''m no trolling.  I just spent three days of a long weekend
trying to
get Rails to work - I''m investing in learning this thing.

Cheers

Andrew Stuart

I''m new to Rails also, and I always called my tables in the singular.

But I prefer the rails way now. I think of tableS as containerS of many
widgetS, and relationships between models as encompassing one widget or
many widgetS.

After a little use, it becomes second nature, and my old singular naming
technique seems flawed.

Cheers,

Neville

 

-----Original Message-----
From: rails-bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
[mailto:rails-bounces-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Stuart
Sent: Tuesday, 15 March 2005 5:09 PM
To: rails-1W37MKcQCpIf0INCOvqR/iCwEArCW2h5@public.gmane.org
Subject: [Rails] What''s the thinking behind pluralisation?

Hello,

At risk of being named a Troll after the rather heated discussion of
earlier today, I''d like to better understand the thinking behind the
design decision to pluralise things.  Please note that I am a newbie,
and to this newbie, pluralisation is quite confusing.

I''m going to start from the assumption that pluralisation is a really
good idea and like so many things in Rails, I simply don''t yet
understand its subtlety and power.  I''m hoping someone can give me a
deeper understanding of the magic of pluralisation.

On the surface pluralisation seems to add complexity and rules to Rails,
which generally appears to be a framework designed to reduce complexity
and rules.  Strange.

One of the most confusing things for the Rails beginner (i.e. me) is
constantly asking myself questions like "Why is this pluralised?",
"Am I
meant to be using singular or plural?", "Is this problem caused by the
fact that something should be plural, or something that should be
singular?"
>From an intutive perspective, I would much prefer that Rails did not do
anything that I did not ask it to do, like pluralisation.

In any other development environment I know if I name a database table
"blahwidget", then for the rest of the lifetime of the application I
can
reasonably assume that I will be referring to the blahwidget table.
Under Rails however, it seems that it may or may not be necessary to
refer to it as blahwidgets, or maybe the table must be called
blahwidgets rather than blahwidget in the first place.  As you can see,
it''s confusing to the uninitiated.  It seems very important to me to be
able to assume that an entire system deals with the blahwidget as-is.
No modifications, no references to "blahwidgets".

So I guess the question of this email is; "what is it that pluralisation
adds that is so powerful that it justifies adding in the significant
confusion of trying to work out how pluralisation fits into the entire
Rails picture?"

Programming languages and frameworks are complex enough without bringing
in the even more complex elements of the English language like
pluralisation.

Could someone please set me straight?  I''d like to hear that it is much
easier to understand than I think, and that it adds enormous value to
Rails.

And no I''m no trolling.  I just spent three days of a long weekend
trying to get Rails to work - I''m investing in learning this thing.

Cheers

Andrew Stuart














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On Tue, 15 Mar 2005 17:09:18 +1100, Andrew Stuart
<andrew.stuart-HYVr4Vs6GMsQrrorzV6ljw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> In any other development environment I know if I name a database table
> "blahwidget", then for the rest of the lifetime of the
application I can
> reasonably assume that I will be referring to the blahwidget table.  Under
> Rails however, it seems that it may or may not be necessary to refer to it
> as blahwidgets, or maybe the table must be called blahwidgets rather than
> blahwidget in the first place.  As you can see, it''s confusing to
the
> uninitiated.  It seems very important to me to be able to assume that an
> entire system deals with the blahwidget as-is.  No modifications, no
> references to "blahwidgets".
I think the idea of pluralisation is that it makes your code easier to
read as plain english. And it''s easy to tell whether to pluralise the
word or not, just think of the normal English rules (yes, I''m aware of
how ironic that is... ;)

You''d want to call your table blahwidgets, pluralised, since your
table will presumably have more than one row in it. Each row is a
single blahwidget, the table contains all the blahwidgets. So your
model will be named in the singular (blahwidget.rb), because the model
is one singular blahwidget that represents the structure of each
blahwidget individually. In turn, your controller will be named in the
plural, since it is representing how all of the blahwidgets interact
with each other and the user (though each action will be different;
eg, your show action will create one blahwidget in the @blahwidget
variable, but your list action will create an array of blahwidgets in
@blahwidgets, which you then iterate over for the purpose of
displaying.

Just think, from the perspective of an English speaker, how awkward
these phrases are:

has_many :blahwidget
for articles in categories.article

These statements are nonsensical. In the first line, you have many of
just one thing, and in the second line, you are taking plural articles
from just one thing (the second line is really bad, it makes it look
like you''re taking one article from several categories, and then
taking several articles from just the one article. hooray for
contrived examples!).

So rails introduces nice pluralisation rules to make the code more pretty:

has_many :blahwidgets
for article in category.articles

It makes much more sense grammatically. You can have one blahwidget,
or many blahwidgets. In the second line, you are looking at the
current category, getting the articles from it, and iterating over
each article.

I''m not aware of any really profound benefits to this, other than
"it
makes the code easier to read". I find it totally natural. If
you''re
struggling to figure out when to pluralise and when not, all I can
really think is, is english not your first language?

-- 
One Guy With A Camera
http://rbpark.ath.cx

Andrew,

I found when training another developer to use rails that this was often 
confusing to him. It threw me at first too since just about every book 
on database theory I''ve read uses singular entity names--a standard 
among popular ER standards like Martin for instance. Most formal 
treatments I''ve seen are agreed on this point and  I don''t
think its
even up for discussion in academic circles, but in practice there 
appears to be a diversity of opinion. I''d hate to be responsible for 
kicking off a fiery debate on the topic but, Andrew, you are not alone 
in thinking that this feature (which strikes as me pretty neat, though 
perhaps excessive) is also confusing at first.

I am no troll either, hit 3170 LOC today. :)

John-Mason P. Shackelford

Hello,

This is a newbie question.  I''ve scanned the documentation for a HOWTO
but
can''t seem to see a relevant one.

I have a small database (actually the todo database from the tutorial).

All seems to be working in that Rails works and I can view, add, edit,
remove records.

I would now like to start adding fields to the application and extending it
iteratively.

I assume though that adding fields to the database will make it necessary
for me to regenerate all the code by running the generate scripts again
including generate scaffold.  Is this the correct way to add fields - i.e.
to add fields to database then regenerate all code?  What happens to any
customisations that I might have made to the generated code, for example
new.rhtml?

Thanks in advance.

Andrew Stuart

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:01:55 +1100, Andrew Stuart
<andrew.stuart-HYVr4Vs6GMsQrrorzV6ljw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I assume though that adding fields to the database will make it necessary
> for me to regenerate all the code by running the generate scripts again
> including generate scaffold.  Is this the correct way to add fields - i.e.
No, you definitely should _not_ regenerate. Actually, one of
ActiveRecord''s best features is the fact that, once you add the column
to your table, the property is automatically available to the model
class. This is because AR uses run-time reflection on the database to
determine what attributes to present.

-- 
Regards,
John Wilger

-----------
Alice came to a fork in the road. "Which road do I take?" she asked.
"Where do you want to go?" responded the Cheshire cat.
"I don''t know," Alice answered.
"Then," said the cat, "it doesn''t matter."
- Lewis Carrol, Alice in Wonderland

On Wed, 16 Mar 2005 11:01:55 +1100, Andrew Stuart
<andrew.stuart-HYVr4Vs6GMsQrrorzV6ljw@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> I assume though that adding fields to the database will make it necessary
> for me to regenerate all the code by running the generate scripts again
> including generate scaffold.  Is this the correct way to add fields - i.e.
No, this is definitely the _worst_ thing you could do, unless you
enjoy starting your application from scratch every time you add a
field to the database.

If you add a field, your models will automatically pick them up and
know about them. The only things you''ll have to do are:

 - add a bit in your views to be able to display and edit this new field
 - add the validations for this field into the model

And you shouldn''t even have to do anything to your controllers.
> to add fields to database then regenerate all code?  What happens to any
> customisations that I might have made to the generated code, for example
> new.rhtml?
You lose it. End of story.

-- 
One Guy With A Camera
http://rbpark.ath.cx

John-Mason P. Shackelford wrote:
> I found when training another developer to use rails that this was often 
> confusing to him. It threw me at first too since just about every book 
> on database theory I''ve read uses singular entity names--a
standard
> among popular ER standards like Martin for instance. Most formal 
> treatments I''ve seen are agreed on this point and  I
don''t think its
> even up for discussion in academic circles, but in practice there 
> appears to be a diversity of opinion. I''d hate to be responsible
for
> kicking off a fiery debate on the topic but, Andrew, you are not alone 
> in thinking that this feature (which strikes as me pretty neat, though 
> perhaps excessive) is also confusing at first.
Some of the clients I work for use singular, some plural. The books I 
have on databases and SQL are divided (interestingly, the Oracle 8i 
Certification Course uses singular, but the sample schemas for Oracle 9i 
use plural).

I don''t think Rails is quite there yet in being able to deal with
legacy
databases, but even in "green field" situations you have to follow the
data modelling standards of your clients. So why not make it an option?

    Justin

> I don''t think Rails is quite there yet in being able to deal with 
> legacy databases, but even in "green field" situations you have
to
> follow the data modelling standards of your clients. So why not make 
> it an option?
It is. And has been almost since the beginning:

ActiveRecord::Base.pluralize_table_names = false
--
David Heinemeier Hansson,
http://www.basecamphq.com/   -- Web-based Project Management
http://www.rubyonrails.org/  -- Web-application framework for Ruby
http://www.loudthinking.com/ -- Broadcasting Brain

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
>> I don''t think Rails is quite there yet in being able to deal
with
>> legacy databases, but even in "green field" situations you
have to
>> follow the data modelling standards of your clients. So why not make 
>> it an option?
> 
> 
> It is. And has been almost since the beginning:
> 
> ActiveRecord::Base.pluralize_table_names = false
Many thanks.

     Justin

Pluralisation(?) doesn''t bother me because that''s the way I
code
anyway. One thing that was a bit worrying when starting with Rails was 
a little inconsistency I found.

All the tutorials I read used the generator controller to create a 
controller with a singular name. eg TodoController, but when I used the 
scaffold generator it created plural controllers. This freaked me out a 
bit because of a statement I read where Rails uses the names to find 
the correct classes to use. It all seems to work though so maybe not.

Is this a generator bug or out of date docs or "It just doesn''t
matter"?


Henry

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:16:15 +1300, Henry Maddocks
<henryj-wUU9E3n5/m4qAMOr+u8IRA@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> All the tutorials I read used the generator controller to create a
> controller with a singular name. eg TodoController, but when I used the
> scaffold generator it created plural controllers. This freaked me out a
> bit because of a statement I read where Rails uses the names to find
> the correct classes to use. It all seems to work though so maybe not.
> 
> Is this a generator bug or out of date docs or "It just
doesn''t matter"?
I noticed that issue, too. I think what''s happened is that when you
actually called the "script/generate controller", you gave it a
singular name, and it just uses whatever name you say. but when you
generate the scaffolding, it generates the models and the controllers
and all that for you, so it has to diddle with the pluralisation rules
for you anyway, and it assumes you want plural controllers.

Personally I think pluralised controllers make more sense anyway.
"photo/list" doesn''t make any sense, you''re listing
one photo? No,
it''s a list of photoS, so you want "photos/list". For the
show action,
it could go either way, really. "photo/show/1" would be "show
photo
#1", which makes sense, but then "photos/show/1" would be
"of all the
photos, show #1", which also makes sense.

-- 
One Guy With A Camera
http://rbpark.ath.cx

Rob Park wrote:
> On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 17:16:15 +1300, Henry Maddocks
> <henryj-wUU9E3n5/m4qAMOr+u8IRA@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
>>All the tutorials I read used the generator controller to create a
>>controller with a singular name. eg TodoController, but when I used the
>>scaffold generator it created plural controllers. This freaked me out a
>>bit because of a statement I read where Rails uses the names to find
>>the correct classes to use. It all seems to work though so maybe not.
>>
>>Is this a generator bug or out of date docs or "It just
doesn''t matter"?
> 
> 
> I noticed that issue, too. I think what''s happened is that when
you
> actually called the "script/generate controller", you gave it a
> singular name, and it just uses whatever name you say. but when you
> generate the scaffolding, it generates the models and the controllers
> and all that for you, so it has to diddle with the pluralisation rules
> for you anyway, and it assumes you want plural controllers.
> 
> Personally I think pluralised controllers make more sense anyway.
> "photo/list" doesn''t make any sense, you''re
listing one photo? No,
> it''s a list of photoS, so you want "photos/list". For
the show action,
> it could go either way, really. "photo/show/1" would be
"show photo
> #1", which makes sense, but then "photos/show/1" would be
"of all the
> photos, show #1", which also makes sense.
> 
I also noticed this. But, by your logic wouldn''t we also want
pluralized
models? I mean, when you say Photo.find_all, you don''t want to find all
of one photo, right? Maybe people should just stick to always using 
pluralized forms for everything in the MVC.

PS- I am a Noob so I might be way off base.

-- 

Tabor Kelly
tkelly-rails-15BJK4dlZCtAtc6zTKlAYNHuzzzSOjJt@public.gmane.org
http://tabor.taborandtashell.net

Models are always singular (unless you are modelling a list). 
Collections of models are plural and find_all returns a collection. 
Controllers could be either and we can argue this until the cows come 
home because it doesn''t really matter unless Rails is doing reflection 
to figure out what calls to make which was my main concern. Plus 
because it didn''t match the tutorials.

It seems to be working so I guess it doesn''t matter.


On 17/03/2005, at 8:00 PM, Tabor Kelly wrote:
> I also noticed this. But, by your logic wouldn''t we also want 
> pluralized models? I mean, when you say Photo.find_all, you don''t
want
> to find all of one photo, right? Maybe people should just stick to 
> always using pluralized forms for everything in the MVC.