How to use concerns in Rails 4

The default Rails 4 project generator now creates the directory "concerns" under controllers and models. I have found some explanations about how to use routing concerns, but nothing about controllers or models.

I am pretty sure it has to do with the current "DCI trend" in the community and would like to give it a try.

The question is, how am I supposed to use this feature, is there a convention on how to define the naming / class hierarchy in order to make it work? How can I include a concern in a model or controller?

So I found it out by myself. It is actually a pretty simple but powerful concept. It has to do with code reuse as in the example below. Basically, the idea is to extract common and / or context specific chunks of code in order to clean up the models and avoid them getting too fat and messy.

As an example, I'll put one well known pattern, the taggable pattern:

# app/models/product.rb
class Product
  include Taggable

  ...
end

# app/models/concerns/taggable.rb
# notice that the file name has to match the module name 
# (applying Rails conventions for autoloading)
module Taggable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    has_many :taggings, as: :taggable
    has_many :tags, through: :taggings

    class_attribute :tag_limit
  end

  def tags_string
    tags.map(&:name).join(', ')
  end

  def tags_string=(tag_string)
    tag_names = tag_string.to_s.split(', ')

    tag_names.each do |tag_name|
      tags.build(name: tag_name)
    end
  end

  # methods defined here are going to extend the class, not the instance of it
  module ClassMethods
    
    def tag_limit(value)
      self.tag_limit_value = value
    end

  end

end

So following the Product sample, you can add Taggable to any class you desire and share its functionality.

This is pretty well explained by DHH:

> In Rails 4, we’re going to invite programmers to use concerns with the > default app/models/concerns and app/controllers/concerns directories > that are automatically part of the load path. Together with the > ActiveSupport::Concern wrapper, it’s just enough support to make this > light-weight factoring mechanism shine.

I have been reading about using model concerns to skin-nize fat models as well as DRY up your model codes. Here is an explanation with examples:

1. DRYing up model codes

---

Consider a Article model, a Event model and a Comment model. An article or an event has many comments. A comment belongs to either Article or Event.

Traditionally, the models may look like this:

Comment Model:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end

Article Model:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments, as: :commentable 
   
  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  def self.least_commented
   #return the article with least number of comments
  end
end

Event Model

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :comments, as: :commentable 
   
  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  def self.least_commented
   #returns the event with least number of comments
  end
end

As we can notice, there is a significant piece of code common to both Event and Article. Using concerns we can extract this common code in a separate module Commentable.

For this create a commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns.

module Commentable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    has_many :comments, as: :commentable
  end

  # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  def find_first_comment
    comments.first(created_at DESC)
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def least_commented
      #returns the article/event which has the least number of comments
    end
  end
end

And now your models look like this :

Comment Model:

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :commentable, polymorphic: true
end

Article Model:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
end

Event Model:

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
end

2) Skin-nizing Fat Models.

Consider a Event model. A event has many attenders and comments.

Typically, the event model might look like this

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base   
  has_many :comments
  has_many :attenders

  
  def find_first_comment
    # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  end
  
  def find_comments_with_word(word)
    # for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
  end 

  def self.least_commented
    # finds the event which has the least number of comments
  end

  def self.most_attended
    # returns the event with most number of attendes
  end
  
  def has_attendee(attendee_id)
    # returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
  end
end

Models with many associations and otherwise have tendency to accumulate more and more code and become unmanageable. Concerns provide a way to skin-nize fat modules making them more modularized and easy to understand.

The above model can be refactored using concerns as below: Create a attendable.rb and commentable.rb file in app/models/concerns/event folder

attendable.rb

module Attendable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do 
    has_many :attenders
  end

  def has_attender(attender_id)
    # returns true if the event has the mentioned attendee
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def most_attended
      # returns the event with most number of attendes
    end
  end
end

commentable.rb

module Commentable
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do 
    has_many :comments
  end

  def find_first_comment
    # for the given article/event returns the first comment
  end

  def find_comments_with_word(word)
    # for the given event returns an array of comments which contain the given word
  end

  module ClassMethods
    def least_commented
      # finds the event which has the least number of comments
    end
  end
end

And now using Concerns, your Event model reduces to

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  include Commentable
  include Attendable
end

*** While using concerns its advisable to go for 'domain' based grouping rather than 'technical' grouping. Domain Based grouping is like 'Commentable', 'Photoable', 'Attendable'. Technical grouping will mean 'ValidationMethods', 'FinderMethods' etc**

It's worth to mention that using concerns is considered bad idea by many.

1. like this guy
2. and this one

Some reasons:

1. There is some dark magic happening behind the scenes - Concern is patching include method, there is a whole dependency handling system - way too much complexity for something that's trivial good old Ruby mixin pattern.
2. Your classes are no less dry. If you stuff 50 public methods in various modules and include them, your class still has 50 public methods, it's just that you hide that code smell, sort of put your garbage in the drawers.
3. Codebase is actually harder to navigate with all those concerns around.
4. Are you sure all members of your team have same understanding what should really substitute concern?

Concerns are easy way to shoot yourself in the leg, be careful with them.

This post helped me understand concerns.

# app/models/trader.rb
class Trader
  include Shared::Schedule
end

# app/models/concerns/shared/schedule.rb
module Shared::Schedule
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  ...
end

I felt most of the examples here demonstrated the power of module rather than how ActiveSupport::Concern adds value to module.

Example 1: More readable modules.

So without concerns this how a typical module will be.

module M
  def self.included(base)
    base.extend ClassMethods
    base.class_eval do
      scope :disabled, -> { where(disabled: true) }
    end
  end

  def instance_method
    ...
  end

  module ClassMethods
    ...
  end
end

After refactoring with ActiveSupport::Concern.

require 'active_support/concern'

module M
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  included do
    scope :disabled, -> { where(disabled: true) }
  end

  class_methods do
    ...
  end

  def instance_method
    ...
  end
end

You see instance methods, class methods and included block are less messy. Concerns will inject them appropriately for you. That's one advantage of using ActiveSupport::Concern.

---

Example 2: Handle module dependencies gracefully.

module Foo
  def self.included(base)
    base.class_eval do
      def self.method_injected_by_foo_to_host_klass
        ...
      end
    end
  end
end

module Bar
  def self.included(base)
    base.method_injected_by_foo_to_host_klass
  end
end

class Host
  include Foo # We need to include this dependency for Bar
  include Bar # Bar is the module that Host really needs
end

In this example Bar is the module that Host really needs. But since Bar has dependency with Foo the Host class have to include Foo (but wait why does Host want to know about Foo? Can it be avoided?).

So Bar adds dependency everywhere it goes. And order of inclusion also matters here. This adds lot of complexity/dependency to huge code base.

After refactoring with ActiveSupport::Concern

require 'active_support/concern'

module Foo
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  included do
    def self.method_injected_by_foo_to_host_klass
      ...
    end
  end
end

module Bar
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern
  include Foo

  included do
    self.method_injected_by_foo_to_host_klass
  end
end

class Host
  include Bar # It works, now Bar takes care of its dependencies
end

Now it looks simple.

If you are thinking why can't we add Foo dependency in Bar module itself? That won't work since method_injected_by_foo_to_host_klass have to be injected in a class that's including Bar not on Bar module itself.

Source: Rails ActiveSupport::Concern

In concerns make file filename.rb

For example I want in my application where attribute create_by exist update there value by 1, and 0 for updated_by

module TestConcern 
  extend ActiveSupport::Concern

  def checkattributes   
    if self.has_attribute?(:created_by)
      self.update_attributes(created_by: 1)
    end
    if self.has_attribute?(:updated_by)
      self.update_attributes(updated_by: 0)
    end
  end

end

If you want to pass arguments in action

included do
   before_action only: [:create] do
     blaablaa(options)
   end
end

after that include in your model like this:

class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
  include TestConcern
end