Rails - Apr 2006 - How to create tables/models on the fly?

Hi everyone,

I need to create a lot of new db tables during application lifecycle. 
Like 1000 tables, each holding data from a specific device, collecting 
data in real time. Each table may have different columns number, e.g. 
one is:

datetime, temperature, pressure

and another will be:

datetime, voltage, current, power, resistance.

Can anybody advice how to best achive it, to make good use of Rails 
framework capabilities, e.g. to use @device_table_name.temperature etc. 
in templates? One possibility I am trying now is Class.new(superclass) 
but maybe there are proven better approaches?

I didn''t tell that I need to create these new classes from web 
interface, so that regular user could add new devices to the solution 
easily.

Thank you!
Sergey

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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

why would you need seperate tables???

arent all devices just specialized ''devices''?

could your problem be solved by inheritance and/or aggregations??



On Monday, April 10, 2006, at 10:45 AM, sergey podlesnyi
wrote:
>Hi everyone,
>
>I need to create a lot of new db tables during application lifecycle.
>Like 1000 tables, each holding data from a specific device, collecting
>data in real time. Each table may have different columns number, e.g.
>one is:
>
>datetime, temperature, pressure
>
>and another will be:
>
>datetime, voltage, current, power, resistance.
>
>Can anybody advice how to best achive it, to make good use of Rails
>framework capabilities, e.g. to use @device_table_name.temperature etc.
>in templates? One possibility I am trying now is Class.new(superclass)
>but maybe there are proven better approaches?
>
>I didn''t tell that I need to create these new classes from web
>interface, so that regular user could add new devices to the solution
>easily.
>
>Thank you!
>Sergey
>
>--
>Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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>Rails mailing list
>Rails@lists.rubyonrails.org
>http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

Mikkel Bruun

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Mikkel Bruun wrote:
> why would you need seperate tables???
> 
> arent all devices just specialized ''devices''?
> 
> could your problem be solved by inheritance and/or aggregations??
> 
Hi Mikkel,

they should be in sepatate tables for many reasons: scalability (imagine 
1000 devices sending their data in real time, we could split database 
across several drives to store tables); compatibility with SCADA 
applications, and they really have different table structure for 
different devices. So simple solutions like having generic table with 
255 columns for data and device ID column won''t work.

Sergey

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

I agree this would be a useful feature as some projects entail user 
created "templates" or other "class equivalents" that should
be mapped
to ActiveRecord classes.  Creation of classes and tables should not 
always require a developer.  Does anyone know of any behind the scenes 
rails magic that would prevent the loading model classes from a database 
on the fly?

> Mikkel Bruun wrote:
>> why would you need seperate tables???
>> 
>> arent all devices just specialized ''devices''?
>> 
>> could your problem be solved by inheritance and/or aggregations??
>> 
> 
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Sorenson wrote:
> I agree this would be a useful feature as some projects entail user 
> created "templates" or other "class equivalents" that
should be mapped
> to ActiveRecord classes.  Creation of classes and tables should not 
> always require a developer.  Does anyone know of any behind the scenes 
> rails magic that would prevent the loading model classes from a database 
> on the fly?
> 
Since my last post, I''ve made workaround: made a fake table

CREATE TABLE factory
(
id int unsigned not null auto_increment primary key
);

And a class factory.rb with class methods for creating tables and 
accessing data.

These class methods still use Rails'' connection to database, so you can
just write

#########################
class Factory < ActiveRecord::Base

  def self.create_table(table_name, rtu_fields)
    begin
      self.connection.create_table(table_name) do |tbl|
        tbl.column :t, :datetime
      end
      rtu_fields.each do |f|
        self.connection.add_column(table_name, f.sql_field_name, 
:integer)
      end
    rescue
      return nil
    end
  end

  def self.get_last(table_name, n)
    self.connection.select_all("select * from #{table_name} LIMIT
#{n}")
  end

end
##########################
Thus, in your application you can use calls like

result = Factory(''new_table'', @field_names_list)
recordset = Factory(''existing_table_name'', 10)
puts recordset[''column)name'']


So that''s not bad!

Sergey

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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Not bad at all!  I''ll give it a try.
> ##########################
> Thus, in your application you can use calls like
> 
> result = Factory(''new_table'', @field_names_list)
> recordset = Factory(''existing_table_name'', 10)
> puts recordset[''column)name'']
> 
> 
> So that''s not bad!
> 
> Sergey

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