johmue

johmue

Hook function in Ecto.Schema to set virtual fields when querying a Schema struct from the data store

In this talk on Ecto the speaker recommends to calculate persistent fields from virtual Ecto.Schema fields that come in from user input in a changeset.

In his example there is an Ecto.Schema like

defmodule MusicDb.Track
...
  schema "tracks" do
    field :title, :string
    field :duration, :integer
    field :duration_string, :string, virtual: true

    timestamps()
  end

The duration field holds the duration in seconds persistently in the database. The duration_string is used to hand in the duration time from user input as a string, For example duration_string comes in as "3:25" in the changeset which would be piped through a function that sets the time_in_seconds field to 205.

So far so good. But how do I go the way back? When I query a Track my duration_string field would be nil. Is there any way to install some hook function in the schema where the Track struct is piped through whenever I query a Track so that I can calculate and set duration_string?

Marked As Solved

dimitarvp

dimitarvp

Because this community does not like implicit / magic behaviour. We like things explicit. :slight_smile:

Plus, this seems like a perfect candidate for a Phoenix context: make a function like Tracks.load which takes care of the duration shenanigans and you’re in a good place.

Also Liked

hauleth

hauleth

There is list of possible solutions:

  • persist field
  • create view with value computed
  • create custom Ecto type
  • create function to transform one to another
  • create comparison function in DB
  • create custom type in DB

These are few of possibilities. Which one is the best for You depends on what you need.

LostKobrakai

LostKobrakai

benwilson512

benwilson512

Author of Craft GraphQL APIs in Elixir with Absinthe

I’d consider looking into Boundary — boundary v0.10.4. It can allow you to enforce programmatically where you allow things like Repo calls.

This general problem is part of why I’d like to take some time to make Dataloader more ergonomic outside of Absinthe. Over fetching / under fetching is really quite a hard problem to tackle.

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