One of my favorite features of Rails is named scopes. Maybe it’s because I’ve seen so much Rails code with conditions and finders spread all over the code base, but I feel that named scopes should be used almost always where you would find yourself otherwise writing a find_by or even using the conditions argument directly in consumer code. The basic rule I follow is to always use named scopes outside of models to select a specific subset of a model.

So what is a named scope? It’s really just an easier way of creating a custom finder method on your model, but it gives you some extra benefits I’ll talk about later. So if we have code like:

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.find_all_fluxes
    find(:all, :conditions => {:fluxes => true})    
  end
end

p Foo.find_all_fluxes

we can easily replace that with

class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
  named_scope :find_all_fluxes, :conditions => {:fluxes => :true}
end

p Foo.find_all_fluxes

You can give named_scope any argument that find can take. So you can create named scopes specifically for ordering, specifically for including an association, etc.

The above example is fixed to always have the same conditions. But named_scope can also take arguments. You do that by instead of fixing the arguments, send in a lambda that will return the arguments to use:

def self.ordered_inbetween(from, to)
  find(:all, :conditions => {:order_date => from..to})
end

Foo.ordered_inbetween(10.days.ago, Date.today)

can become:

named_scope :ordered_inbetween, lambda {|from, to|
  {:conditions => {:order_date => from..to}}
}  

Foo.ordered_inbetween(10.days.ago, Date.today)

It’s important that you use the curly braces form of block for the lambda — if you happen to use do-end instead, you might not get the right result, since the block will bind to named_scope. The block that binds to named_scope is used to add extensions to the collections returned, and thus will not contribute to the arguments given to find. It’s a mistake I’ve done several times, and it’s very easy to make. So make sure to test your named scopes too!

So what is it that makes named scopes so useful? Several things. First, they are composable. Second, they establish an explicit interface to the model functionality. Third, you can use them on associations. There are other benefits too, but these are the main ones. Simply put, they are a cleaner solution than the alternatives.

What do I mean by composable? Well, you can call one on the result of calling another. So say that we have these named scopes:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  named_scope :by_name, :order => "name ASC"
  named_scope :by_age, :order => "age DESC"
  named_scope :top_ten, :limit => 10
  named_scope :from, lambda {|country|
    {:conditions => {:country => country}}
  }
end

Then you can say:

Person.top_ten.by_name
Person.top_ten.from("Germany")
Person.top_ten.by_age.from("Germany")

I dare you to do that in a clean way by using class method finders.

I hope you have already seen what I mean by offering a clean interface. You can hide some of the implementation details inside your model, and your controller and view code will read more cleanly because of it.

The third point I made was about associations. Simply, if you have an association, you can use a named scope on that association, just as if it was the model class itself. So if we have:

class ApartmentBuilding < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :tenants, :class_name => "Person"
end

a = ApartmentBuilding.first
a.tenants.from("Sweden").by_age

So named scopes are great, and you should use them. Whenever you sit down to write a finder, see if you can’t express it as a named scope instead.

(Note: some of the things I write about here only concerns Rails 2. Most of the work I do is still in the old world of 2.3.)

By Ola Bini | In: blogging, ruby | tags: named scopes, rails, rails in the small, ruby, tricks. | #