FreshConnection provides access to one or more configured database replicas.
For example:
Rails ------------ DB Master
|
+---- DB Replica
or
Rails -------+---- DB Master
|
| +------ DB Replica1
| |
+---- Loadbalancer ---+
|
+------ DB Replica2
FreshConnction connects one or more configured DB replicas, or with multiple replicas behind a DB query load balancer.
- Read queries go to the DB replica.
- Write queries go to the DB master.
- Within a transaction, all queries go to the DB master.
If you wish to use multiple DB replicas on any given connection but do not have a load balancer (such as pgbouncer
for Posgres databases), you can use EbisuConnection.
Read queries are automatically connected to the DB replica.
Article.where(id: 1)
Account.count
If you wish to ensure that queries are directed to the DB master, call read_master
.
Note: Before version 0.4.3,
readonly(false)
must be used.
Article.where(id: 1).read_master
Account.read_master.count
Within transactions, all queries are connected to the DB master.
Article.transaction do
Article.where(id: 1)
end
Create, update and delete queries are connected to the DB master.
new_article = Article.create(...)
new_article.title = "FreshConnection"
new_article.save
...
old_article.destroy
- FreshConnection supports ActiveRecord version 4.2 or later.
- If you are using Rails 4.1 or 4.0, you can use FreshConnection version 2.1.2 or before.
- If you are using Rails 3.2, you can use FreshConnection version 1.0.0 or before.
FreshConnection currently supports MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Add this line to your application's Gemfile
:
gem "fresh_connection"
And then execute:
$ bundle
Or install it manually with:
$ gem install fresh_connection
If you are using NewRelic or other gems that insert themselves into the ActiveRecord call-chain using method_alias
, then a slight variation on the installation and configuration is required.
In the Gemfile
, use:
gem "fresh_connection", require: false
Then, in config/application.rb
, add the following:
config.after_initialize do
require 'fresh_connection'
end
The FreshConnection database replica is configured within the standard Rails
database configuration file, config/database.yml
, using a replica:
stanza.
Security Note:
We strongly recommend against using secrets within the
config/database.yml
file. Instead, it is both convenient and advisable to use ERB substitutions with environment variables within the file.
Using the
dotenv
gem to keep secrets in a.env
file that is never committed to the source management repository will help make secrets manageable.
Below is a sample such configuration file.
production:
adapter: mysql2
encoding: utf8
reconnect: true
database: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_NAME'] %>
pool: 5
username: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_USER'] %>
password: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_PASS'] %>
host: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_HOST'] %>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
replica:
username: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_USER'] %>
password: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_PASS'] %>
host: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_HOST'] %>
replica
is the configuration used for connecting read-only queries to the database replica. All other connections will use the database master settings.
If you want to use multiple configured DB replicas, the configuration can contain multiple replica
stanzas in the configuration file config/database.yml
.
For example:
production:
adapter: mysql2
encoding: utf8
reconnect: true
database: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_NAME'] %>
pool: 5
username: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_USER'] %>
password: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_PASS'] %>
host: <%= ENV['DB_MASTER_HOST'] %>
socket: /var/run/mysqld/mysqld.sock
replica:
username: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_USER'] %>
password: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_PASS'] %>
host: <%= ENV['DB_REPLICA_HOST'] %>
admin_replica:
username: <%= ENV['DB_ADMIN_REPLICA_USER'] %>
password: <%= ENV['DB_ADMIN_REPLICA_PASS'] %>
host: <%= ENV['DB_ADMIN_REPLICA_HOST'] %>
The custom replica stanza can then be applied as an argument to the establish_fresh_connection
method in the models that should use it. For example:
class AdminUser < ActiveRecord::Base
establish_fresh_connection :admin_replica
end
The child (sub) classes of the configured model will inherit the same access as the parent class. Example:
class AdminBase < ActiveRecord::Base
establish_fresh_connection :admin_replica
end
class AdminUser < AdminBase
end
class Benefit < AdminBase
end
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
end
The AdminUser
and Benefit
models will access the database configured for the admin_replica
group.
The Customer
model will use the default connections: read-only queries will connect to the standard DB replica, and state-changing queries will connect to the DB master.
Alternative to using a configuration in the database.yml
file, it is possible to completely specify the replica access components using environment variables.
The environment variables corresponding to the :replica
group are DATABASE_REPLICA_URL
and DATABASE_REPLICA1_URL
, with the latter being used only if the former is not defined.
The URL value is a URL string with the following components:
adapter://dbuser:dbpass@dbhost:dbport/dbname?querypath
where the components are:
Component | Purpose | Examples |
---|---|---|
adapter | Declares the database adapter | mysql , postgresql |
dbuser | The login for the database | root , postgres |
dbpass | The password for the database | |
dbhost | The hostname for the database | db1 , localhost |
dbport | The port for the database connection | 3306 , 5432 |
dbname | The name of the database | mydb , appdb , etc. |
querypath | One or more variable assignments: var1=val1, separated by '&' | pools=5&reconnect=true |
For example, here is a URL appropriate for a connection to a test database on the local host, on a custom port:
export DATABASE_REPLICA_URL='postgresql://root:somepw@localhost:6432/test_db?pool=5&reconnect=true
To specific URLs for multiple replicas, replace the string REPLICA
in the environment variable name with the replica name, in upper case. See the examples for replicas: :replica1
, :replica2
, and :admin_replica
ENVIRONMENT_REPLICA1_URL='mysql://localhost/dbreplica1?pool=5&reconnect=true'
ENVIRONMENT_REPLICA2_URL='postgresql://localhost:6432/ro_db?pool=5&reconnect=true'
ENVIRONMENT_ADMIN_REPLICA_URL='postgresql://localhost:6432/admin_db?pool=5&reconnect=true'
When :replica
is used but DATABASE_REPLICA_URL
is not defined, then the value of DATABASE_REPLICA1_URL
will be used if it is defined.
It is possible to declare that specific models always use the DB master for all connections, using the master_db_only!
method:
class CustomerState < ActiveRecord::Base
master_db_only!
end
All queries generated by methods on the CustomerState
model will be directed to the DB master.
When using FreshConnection with Unicorn (or any other multi-processing web server which restarts processes on the fly), connection management needs special attention during startup:
before_fork do |server, worker|
...
ActiveRecord::Base.clear_all_replica_connections!
...
end
after_fork do |server, worker|
...
ActiveRecord::Base.establish_fresh_connection
...
end
The default replica connection manager is FreshConnection::ConnectionManager
. If an alternative (custom) replica connection manager is desired, this can be done with a simple assignment within a Rails initializer:
config/initializers/fresh_connection.rb
:
FreshConnection.connection_manager = MyOwnReplicaConnection
The MyOwnReplicaConnection
class should inherit from FreshConnection::AbstractConnectionManager
, which has this interface:
class MyOwnReplicaConnection < FreshConnection::AbstractConnectionManager
def replica_connection
# must return an instance of a subclass of ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters
# eg: ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapter::Mysql2Adapter
# or: ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapter::PostgresqlAdapter
end
def clear_all_connections!
# called to disconnect all connections
end
def put_aside!
# called when end of Rails controller action
end
def recovery?
# called when raising exceptions on access to the DB replica
# access will be retried when this method returns true
end
end
- Fork it
- Create your feature branch (
git checkout -b my-new-feature
) - Commit your changes (
git commit -am 'Add some feature'
) - Push to the branch (
git push origin my-new-feature
) - Create new Pull Request
I'm glad that you would like to test!
To run the test suite, both mysql
and postgresql
must be installed.
First, configure the test servers in test/config/*.yml
Then, run:
./bin/setup
To run the spec suite for all supported versions of rails:
./bin/test