How would I join to a subselect (a scope) using Rails 3 and Arel?

Question

I need to join a table to the a select/group-by query (which includes the same table), and I'd like to do it using Arel.

I have a table of :phenotypes which are has_and_belongs_to_many :genes, which are themselves has_and_belongs_to_many :orthogroups. As a result, the relationship between phenotypes and orthogroups are many-to-many.

I have two scopes (on Orthogroup) which get all orthogroups associated with a specific phenotype:

  scope :with_phenotype, lambda { |phenotype_id|
    where("observations.phenotype_id = ?", phenotype_id).
      joins("inner join orthologies on (orthologies.orthogroup_id = orthogroups.id) inner join observations on (observations.gene_id = orthologies.gene_id)")
  }

  scope :with_associated_gene_ids_for_phenotype, lambda { |phenotype_id|
    with_phenotype(phenotype_id).
      select("orthogroups.id, array_agg(distinct observations.gene_id) as associated_gene_ids").
      group("orthogroups.id")
  }

Thus, doing Orthogroup.with_associated_gene_ids_for_phenotype(48291) should return a table of orthogroup IDs and the genes which link them to the phenotypes.

That stuff all works fine.

The issue is that I'd like to get the rest of orthogroups.* and join it to the results of the second scope, so that the list of genes is basically like an extra field on my Orthogroup ActiveRecord model.

Roughly, something like this:

SELECT   o1.*, o_genes.associated_gene_ids
FROM     orthogroups o1
INNER JOIN (
  SELECT    o2.id, array_agg(DISTINCT obs.gene_id) AS associated_gene_ids
  FROM orthogroups o2
  INNER JOIN orthologies ortho ON (ortho.orthogroup_id = o2.id)
  INNER JOIN observations obs ON (ortho.gene_id = obs.gene_id)
  WHERE obs.phenotype_id = ? GROUP BY o2.id
) AS o_genes
ON (o1.id = o_genes.id);

Now, that query appears to work. But I'd much rather find a way to join the Orthogroup table directly to its own scope to get those genes.

Perhaps it'd be simpler to use SQL, but it seems like there should be an easy way with Arel. I've found several similar questions, but none seem to have answers.

The closest solution I've found is this:

def self.orthogroups phenotype_id
  Orthogroup.select("orthogroups.*, o_genes.associated_gene_ids").
    joins(Arel.sql("inner join (" + Orthogroup.with_associated_gene_ids_for_phenotype(phenotype_id).to_sql + ") AS o_genes ON (o_genes.id = orthogroups.id)"))
end

The outputted SQL uses the table "orthogroups" in two contexts, and this worried me; however, a spot check of results suggests the query is correct.

Still, this is not the elegant solution for which I might have hoped. Is it possible to do this without the awkward "inner join (...)"?

Answer 1

Just from an initial glance at your code: have you tried renaming the method and the local variable "orthogroups" to something different as you have a relationship by the same name?