Simple LEFT JOIN with default_scope

Rails
1

Hey everyone,

I’ve got two models: Admin and CallCenter. An Admin may belong to a
CallCenter (the field is nullable). To keep history, Admins and
CallCenters
have a deleted field with, for both of them:

default_scope { where(deleted: false) }

Now, I want to implement Admin.all_detailed which will retrieve all
non-deleted admins with their call center (LEFT JOIN). Simply doing a
eager_load will make a join with the default_scope condition, thus,
non-deleted admins which belong to a deleted call center will be shown
not
having one. The unscoped_associations gem didn’t solve this issue.
Therefor, I did this:

def self.all_detailed
return joins(“LEFT JOIN call_centers ON call_centers.id =
admins.call_center”)
end

But now, when accessing the call center method of each admin, it
triggers a
query:

SELECT call_centers.* FROM call_centers WHERE call_centers.id =
@id
LIMIT 1

I figured out the query doesn’t SELECT the call center’s fields:

SELECT admins.* FROM admins LEFT JOIN call_centers – …

So I added the SELECT fields:

def self.all_detailed
return select(“admins., call_centers.”)
.joins(“LEFT JOIN call_centers ON call_centers.id =
admins.call_center”)
end

But a query is still triggered for every access to the call_center
method
of Admin. It seems like Rails does not know how to link the SELECT with
the
Admin’s association, but I don’t see what else I can do.

Thanks for your help!

2

Kevin,

When I read:
SELECT call_centers.* FROM call_centers WHERE call_centers.id =
@id
LIMIT 1
I recognize the query insert @id as a flag of an error. My guess is
that
your application is not recognizing admins.call_center for some reason.
Check your models, look at your associations–without provisions you
need
to follow Rails conventions. Rails documentation regarding joins with
and
without established association I find lacking, and go to your database
and
try to perform LEFT JOIN there.
Liz

3

On 8 August 2015 at 14:45, Kévin Lesénéchal [email protected]
wrote:

eager_load will make a join with the default_scope condition, thus,
non-deleted admins which belong to a deleted call center will be shown not
having one.

I suggest that the problem may actually lie with your db design. If I
understand your question correctly you allow a non-deleted admin to
belong to a call center that that has been deleted, which seems odd.
Perhaps consider what is the status of a “deleted” call center that
still has associated admins. Is this in fact truly deleted or should
it not be considered deleted until it has no more admins?

As a side note I now avoid default_scope whenever practical, the use
of it regularly turns up problems similar to yours.

Colin