Question

I have the TestVisual class that is inherited by the Game class :

class TestVisual < Game
  include MongoMapper::Document  
end

class Game
  include MongoMapper::Document         

  belongs_to :maestra  

  key :incorrect,         Integer
  key :correct,           Integer
  key :time_to_complete,  Integer

  key :maestra_id, ObjectId

  timestamps!

end

As you can see it belongs to Maestra.

So I can do Maestra.first.games which returns []

But I can not to Maestra.first.test_visuals because it returns undefined method test_visuals

Since I’m working specifically with TestVisuals, that is ideally what I would like to pull, but still have it share the attributes of its parent Game class.

Is this possible with Mongo. If it isn’t or if it isn’t necessary, is there any other better way to reach the TestVisual object from Maestra and still have it inherit Game ?

Answer 1

Single Collection Inheritance (SCI) in MongoMapper auto-generates selection,
ex., the following produce the same results.

p Game.where(_type: 'TestVisual').all
p TestVisual.all

See also mongomapper/lib/mongo_mapper/plugins/sci.rb – MongoMapper::Plugins::Sci::ClassMethods#query

However, MongoMapper does not auto-generate associations for subclasses based on the base class’ associations,
and I don’t think that this should be expected.

Note that SCI places subclasses and base classes in the same MongoDB collection.
If this is not what you want, you should consider other mechanisms for modularity.

You can define the following method yourself for an association accessor method, perhaps this is sufficient for your purposes?
For other association methods like append or push, the parent methods are probably workable.

class Maestra
  include MongoMapper::Document
  key :name, String
  many :games

  def test_visuals
    games.where(_type: 'TestVisual')
  end
end

test/unit/test_visual_test.rb

require 'test_helper'

def ppp(obj)
  puts obj.inspect.gsub(/, ([^#])/, ",\n\t\\1").gsub(/, #/, ",\n #")
end
class TestVisualTest < ActiveSupport::TestCase
  def setup
    Maestra.delete_all
    Game.delete_all
  end

  test "inheritance" do
    maestra = Maestra.create(name: 'Fiona')
    maestra.games << Game.create(incorrect: 1, correct: 9, time_to_complete: 60)
    maestra.games << TestVisual.create(incorrect: 2, correct: 8, time_to_complete: 61)
    ppp maestra.games.to_a
    ppp maestra.test_visuals.to_a
  end
end

output

Run options: --name=test_inheritance

# Running tests:

[#<Game _id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000002'),
    _type: "Game",
    correct: 9,
    created_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00,
    incorrect: 1,
    maestra_id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000001'),
    time_to_complete: 60,
    updated_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00>,
 #<TestVisual _id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000003'),
    _type: "TestVisual",
    correct: 8,
    created_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00,
    incorrect: 2,
    maestra_id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000001'),
    time_to_complete: 61,
    updated_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00>]
[#<TestVisual _id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000003'),
    _type: "TestVisual",
    correct: 8,
    created_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00,
    incorrect: 2,
    maestra_id: BSON::ObjectId('4ff7029a7f11ba6e43000001'),
    time_to_complete: 61,
    updated_at: Fri,
    06 Jul 2012 15:22:02 UTC +00:00>]
.

Finished tests in 0.026661s, 37.5080 tests/s, 0.0000 assertions/s.

1 tests, 0 assertions, 0 failures, 0 errors, 0 skips