CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyactiverecord
ny95
ny95

Reputation: 710

Overide ActiveRecord ID

in my Rails 4 app i would like to override Active Record to create records with ids that have 7 digits of random numbers. Such as 4526378 instead of 1. I found a way to do this but im not sure its the right way to go about doing this. In my models i have:

class App < ActiveRecord::Base
  after_initialize :add_id

  def add_id
    self.id ||= SecureRandom.random_number(9999999) if self.new_record?
  end
end

Is this an acceptable way to do this? Will there be any collisions and if so what would happen, would it try again to create a record with a new SecureRandom. Also is there any way i can setup and initializer.rb file in my config/initializers that automatically does this for every model? Thanks

Ok so I added an initializer called active_record.rb in my config/initializers directory. The code inside looks like:

class ActiveRecord::Base
    before_create :set_id

    def set_id
        self.id = SecureRandom.random_number(9999999)
    end
end

This code above actually works perfectly but now a collision is the issue. In this code can i perform a check to make sure its unique? If its not then generate a new one. I would also be into changing it to SecureRandom.hex in order to allow letters so a chance of a collision descreases.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 545

Answers (1)

user229044
user229044

Reputation: 239270

I would probably leave id alone, and add another field to hold the random ID. Then, before create, generate new random IDs until you hit a unique one.

class ActiveRecord::Base
  validates :random_id, uniqueness: true

  before_create :set_random_id

  def set_random_id
    loop do
      self.random_id = SecureRandom.random_number(9999999)
      break unless find_by_random_id(self.random_id)
    end
  end

end

Note that, the more records you have, the longer it will take to find a random ID that isn't taken. This is why you should probably use a larger random number than 9999999, like a UUID where collisions are virtually impossible.

Upvotes: 5

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