has_many associations don't save with recursive: :true

[rhannequin]

Hello,

First, thank you very much for this gem, it is much appreciated every day from casual to complex data imports.

I am having troubles with the multi-level feature, when trying to import models with associations. I tried to follow the multi-level example this way:

I created a blank app with two models:

$ bundle exec rails g model Book title:string
$ bundle exec rails g model Review name:string book:references

Then I added the association to the Book model:

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :reviews
end

I created a basic rake task with the same code as the example, to insert books with one review in each, and checking at the end if everything went good:

task test: :environment do
  Book.delete_all
  Review.delete_all

  books = []
  10.times do |i|
    book = Book.new(title: "Book ##{i}")
    book.reviews.build(name: "Review ##{i}")
    books << book
  end
  Book.import books, recursive: true

  puts "'Book' records count: #{Book.count}"
  puts "Last 'Book' reviews count: #{Book.last.reviews.count}"
  puts "'Review' records count: #{Review.count}"
end

What I have in return shows that the books were inserted but not the associated reviews:

'Book' records count: 10
Last 'Book' reviews count: 0
'Review' records count: 0

I don't know if my way of inserting associated models in database is wrong or if the multi-level feature has an issue, I thought it was the best place to warn about this behaviour has @sferik 's PR #230 (thank you for that btw) was supposed to fix it.

This test was run on Ubuntu 15.10 with:

• rails v4.2.5.1
• activerecord v4.2.5.1
• sqlite3 v1.3.11
• activerecord-import from Github (at master@df866a4)

This post is a duplicate from my comment on #243.

Thank you.

[JHFirestarter]

@rhannequin ...see @allenwlee's findings in issue #231 (short answer is to add autosave: true and inverse_of in your models).

One problem I've found with this, in a common use case (dropped 2nd problem as it should be its own issue):

If there's also a model that has a has_many .. through association...such as book has_many :reviews and has_many :critics, through: :reviews, critic has_many :reviews and has_many :books, through: :reviews, and finally review belongs_to :book and belongs_to :critic. In this case, what @allenwlee shows will import either books and reviews or critics and reviews (with associations)...but not all 3. The rails docs say inverse_of "[does] not work with :through associations"...so I wonder if that's the core problem with the strategy.

[JHFirestarter]

also, make sure to use the latest version (0.11.0 was throwing off select errors)

[rhannequin]

@JHFirestarter Thank you for your answer.

Unfortunately I'm facing the same results.

Using the same example project from the wiki, I updated the gem version from Github (now 0.12.0 from df866a4) and changed my Book model to:

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :reviews, inverse_of: :book, autosave: true
end

The task return is still the same, even if I added inverse_of and autosave:

'Book' records count: 10
Last 'Book' reviews count: 0
'Review' records count: 0

[JHFirestarter]

@rhannequin do you also have inverse_of and autosave: true in your Reviews model? Remember to use plural form in the Reviews model, i.e. inverse_of: :reviews

[rhannequin]

@JHFirestarter I did not but just did and unfortunately it's still the same. My rake task hasn't changed and my only two models look like this:

class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :reviews, inverse_of: :book, autosave: true
end

class Review < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :book, inverse_of: :reviews, autosave: true
end

Thank you again for your help.

[JHFirestarter]

Just making sure belongs_to: syntax above is bc you're copying from models with different actual names.

[rhannequin]

Yes sorry, just updated my previous comment, the syntax is supposed to be correct.

[JHFirestarter]

@rhannequin np. only difference I can tell between what you and I have is (a) the db (I'm sure postgresql) and (b) potentially how we generated associations (i.e. I generated a review migration containing the line t.belongs_to :book, index: true) which adds to schema.rb both:
t.integer "book_id" and
add_index "reviews", ["book_id"], name: "index_reviews_on_book_id", using: :btree

Models contain:
Review model with belongs_to :book, inverse_of: :reviews, foreign_key: "book_id", autosave: true
Book model with has_many :reviews, inverse_of: :book, autosave: true

I'm out of (limited) ideas after that!

[rhannequin]

@JHFirestarter My project will be on PostgreSQL but I'm using Sqlite3 for this example as I wanted to only test this multi-level feature of the gem.

My schema has been generated from the migrations mentionned above in my first comment, and looks like this:

ActiveRecord::Schema.define(version: 20160302142135) do

  create_table "books", force: :cascade do |t|
    t.string   "title"
    t.datetime "created_at", null: false
    t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
  end

  create_table "reviews", force: :cascade do |t|
    t.string   "name"
    t.integer  "book_id"
    t.datetime "created_at", null: false
    t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
  end

  add_index "reviews", ["book_id"], name: "index_reviews_on_book_id"

end

I should mention that I tested the association in the console, it works when I create a book with some reviews, the records are properly saved.

Thank you again.

[jkowens]

@rhannequin the :recursive option currently only works for Postgres. The documentation should be updated to make that clear. As of version 0.12.0 inverse_of and autosave are no longer required.

[rhannequin]

@jkowens Thank you, that makes sense now. Is there any work in progress to cover Sqlite3 as it may be used on test and development environments? Or maybe is there a feature inside this gem that makes it impossible to work for Sqlite?

[jkowens]

I believe this feature could possibly be implemented for sqlite3, but I don't know if there is currently any work in progress to make that happen.

[yuri-karpovich]

@jkowens and what about mysql2 adapter? Looks like :recursive option doesn't work for it

[jkowens]

@yuri-karpovich you are correct this does not work for mysql2 either.

[zdennis]

If am reading this thread right the desired outcome is that the recursive options works for sqlite and mysql? Is that correct @yuri-karpovich and @jkowens?

[jkowens]

@zdennis that is how I understand it. In #104 @robmathews provided suggestions on how to possibly implement this functionality for SQLite and MySQL.

[jkowens]

@rhannequin with the 0.14.0 release sqlite3 now supports recursive import.

[rhannequin]

@jkowens Thank you, I should be able to test it soon.

[yuri-karpovich]

@jkowens and what about mysql?

[jkowens]

@yuri-karpovich sorry I should have added a comment to this before closing. Unfortunately there currently does not seem to be a good way to implement this feature for MySQL. See PR #279 for some more details. Unless MySQL implements an option to return inserted/updated IDs like PostgreSQL, we will not be able to make this work in a reliable way.

[yuri-karpovich]

@jkowens thank you for information.