Generate an auto increment field in rails

Question

I have a model Token, which has a field token_number that I need to auto increment (starting from 1001), if and only if the user does not provide it. The problem is that, si

Answer 1

Interesting question for me. Unfortunately, rails doesn't provide a way to auto-increment columns, so we must resort to SQL with little automation. I tried this in Rails 3.0.7 using PostgreSQL as my database and it works and hope this will be useful:

Creating sequence for token_number PGSql Documentation

class CreateTokens < ActiveRecord::Migration

  def self.up
    create_table :tokens do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.integer :token_number

      t.timestamps
    end

    execute "CREATE SEQUENCE tokens_token_number_seq START 1001"
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :tokens

    execute "DROP SEQUENCE tokens_token_number_seq"
  end
end

Now, since there is a possibility of token_number being set by the user manually, we'll need to generate the token_number only if it is not being set. Read about Callbacks here. With that we have,

class Token < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Generate the sequence no if not already provided.
  before_validation(:on => :create) do
    self.application_no = next_seq unless attribute_present?("application_no")
  end

  private
    def next_seq(column = 'application_no')
      # This returns a PGresult object [http://rubydoc.info/github/ged/ruby-pg/master/PGresult]
      result = Token.connection.execute("SELECT nextval('tokens_token_number_seq')")

      result[0]['nextval']
    end 
end

A sample run. Please note that for the first token I am not setting token_number and it generates the token_number sequence and for the second I am assigning.

token = Token.new
# => #<Token id: nil, name: nil, token_number: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> 

token.save
  SQL (0.8ms)  BEGIN
  SQL (1.7ms)  SELECT nextval('tokens_token_number_seq')
  SQL (6.6ms)   SELECT tablename
 FROM pg_tables
 WHERE schemaname = ANY (current_schemas(false))

  SQL (33.7ms)  INSERT INTO "tokens" ("name", "token_number", "created_at", "updated_at") VALUES (NULL, 1001, '2012-03-02 12:04:00.848863', '2012-03-02 12:04:00.848863') RETURNING "id"
  SQL (15.9ms)  COMMIT
# => true 

token = Token.new
# => #<Token id: nil, name: nil, token_number: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil> 

token.token_number = 3000
# => 3000 

token.save
  SQL (0.8ms)  BEGIN
  SQL (1.5ms)  INSERT INTO "tokens" ("name", "token_number", "created_at", "updated_at") VALUES (NULL, 3000, '2012-03-02 12:04:22.924834', '2012-03-02 12:04:22.924834') RETURNING "id"
  SQL (19.2ms)  COMMIT
# => true 

Answer 2

another alternatives is set nextval as the default value in your postgresql

this make us not need to write callbacks

class CreateTokens < ActiveRecord::Migration

  def self.up
    create_table :tokens do |t|
      t.string :name
      t.integer :token_number

      t.timestamps
    end

    execute "CREATE SEQUENCE tokens_token_number_seq START 1001"
    execute "ALTER TABLE tokens ALTER COLUMN token_number SET DEFAULT NEXTVAL('tokens_token_number_seq')"
  end

  def self.down
    drop_table :tokens

    execute "DROP SEQUENCE tokens_token_number_seq"
  end
end