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Counter

Tests

Counting and aggregation library for Rails.

By the time you need Rails counter_caches you probably have other needs too. You probably want to sum column values, have conditional counters, and you probably have enough throughput that updating a single column value will cause lock contention problems.

Counter is different from other solutions like Rails counter caches and counter_culture:

  • Counters are objects. This makes it possible for them to have an API that allows you to define them, reset, and recalculate them. The definition of a counter is seperate from the value
  • Counters are persisted as a ActiveRecord models (not a column of an existing model)
  • Counters can also perform aggregation (e.g. sum of column values instead of counting rows) or be calculated from other counters
  • Avoids lock-contention found in other solutions. By storing the value in another object we reduce the contention on the main e.g. User instance. This is only a small improvement though. By using the background change event pattern, we can batch perform the updates reducing the number of processes requiring a lock.
  • Incrementing counters can be safely performed in a background job via a change event/deferred reconciliation pattern (coming in a future iteration)

Usage

You probably shouldn't use it right now unless you're the sort of person that checks if something is poisonous by licking it—or you're working at Podia where we are testing it in production.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'counterwise', require: 'counter'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Install the model migrations:

$ rails counter:install:migrations

Main concepts

Counter::Definition defines what the counter is, what model it's connected to, what association it counts, how the count is performed etc. You create a subclass of Counter::Definition and call a few class methods to configure it. The definition is available through counter.definition for any counter value…

Counter::Value is the value of a counter. So, for example, a User might have many Posts, so a User would have a counters association containing a Counter::Value for the number of posts. Counters can be accessed via their name user.posts_counter or via the find_counter method on the association, e.g. user.counters.find_counter PostCounter

Basic usage

Define a counter

Counters are defined in a seperate class using a small DSL.

Given a Store with many Orders, it would be defined as…

class OrderCounter < Counter::Definition
  count :orders
end

class Store < ApplicationRecord
  include Counter::Counters

  has_many :orders
  counter OrderCounter
end

First we define the counter class itself using count to specify the association we're counting, then "attach" it to the parent Store model.

By default, the counter will be available as <association>_counter, e.g. store.orders_counter. To customise this, use the as method:

class OrderCounter < Counter::Definition
  include Counter::Counters
  count :orders
  as :total_orders
end

store.total_orders

The counter's value will be stored as a Counter::Value with the name prefixed by the model name. e.g. store-total_orders

Access counter values

Since counters are represented as objects, you need to call value on them to retrieve the count.

store.total_orders        #=> Counter::Value
store.total_orders.value  #=> 200

Recalculate a counter

Counters have a habit of drifting over time, particularly if ActiveRecords hooks aren't run (e.g. with a pure SQL data migration) so you need a method of re-counting the metric. Counters make this easy because they are objects in their own right.

You could refresh a store's revenue stats with:

store.order_revenue.recalc!

this would use the definition of the counter, including any option to sum a column. In the case of conditional counters, they are expected to be attached to an association which matched the conditions so the recalculated count remains accurate.

Reset a counter

You can also reset a counter by calling reset.

store.order_revenue.reset

Since counters are ActiveRecord objects, you could also reset them using:

Counter::Value.update value: 0

Verify a counter

You might like to check if a counter is correct

store.product_revenue.correct? #=> false

This will re-count / re-calculate the value and compare it to the current one. If you wish to also update the value when it's not correct, use correct!:

store.product_revenue #=>200
store.product_revenue.reset!
store.product_revenue #=>0
store.product_revenue.correct? #=> false
store.product_revenue.correct! #=> false
store.product_revenue #=>200

Advanced usage

Sort or filter parent models by a counter value

Say a Customer has a total revenue counter, and you'd like to sort the list of customers with the highest spenders at the top. Since the counts aren't stored on the Customer model, you can't just call Customer.order(total_orders: :desc). Instead, Counterwise provides a convenience method to pull the counter values into the resultset.

Customer.order_by_counter TotalRevenueCounter => :desc

# You can sort by multiple counters or mix counters and model attributes
Customer.order_by_counter TotalRevenueCounter => :desc, name: :asc

Under the hood, order_by_counter will uses with_counter_data_from to pull the counter values into the resultset. This is useful if you want to use the counter values in a where clause or select statement.

Customer.with_counter_data_from(TotalRevenueCounter).where("total_revenue_data > 1000")

These methods pull in the counter data itself but don't include the counter instances themselves. To do this, call

customers = Customer.with_counters TotalRevenueCounter
# Since the counters are now preloaded, this avoids an N+1 query
customers.each &:total_revenue

Aggregate a value (e.g. sum of order revenue)

Sometimes you don'y want to count the number of orders but instead sum the value of those orders..

Given an ActiveRecord model Order, we can count a storefront's revenue like so

class Store < ApplicationRecord
  include Counter::Counters

  counter OrderRevenue
end

Define the counter like so

class OrderRevenue < Counter::Definition
  count :orders
  sum :total_price
end

and access it like

  store.orders.create total_price: 100
  store.orders.create total_price: 100
  store.order_revenue.value #=> 200

Hooks

You can add an after_change hook to your counter definition to perform some action when the counter is updated. For example, you might want to send a notification when a counter reaches a certain value.

class OrderRevenueCounter < Counter::Definition
  count :orders, as: :order_revenue
  sum :price

  after_change :send_congratulations_email

  # Only send an email when they cross $1000
  def send_congratulations_email counter, old_value, new_value
    return unless old_value < 1000 && new_value >= 1000
    send_email "Congratulations! You've made #{to} dollars!"
  end
end

Manual counters

Most counters are associated with a model instance and association—these counters are automatically incremented when the associated collection changes but sometimes you just need a manual counter that you can increment.

Manual counters just need a name

class TotalOrderCounter < Counter::Definition
  as "total_orders"
end

TotalOrderCounter.counter.value #=> 5
TotalOrderCounter.counter.increment! #=> 6

Manually calculating a value

There are edge cases where a counter can't be calculated by associations or other counters. You can tell the counter its value manually, in these cases, by using calculated_value. Calculated value takes a lambda and an association. The lambda is called each time an associated record is created, updated, or destroyed.

class RiskyOrdersCounter < Counter::Definition
  calculated_value ->(customer) { customer.orders.risky.count }, association: :orders
end

class Customer
  include Counters::Counter
  counter RiskyOrdersCounter
end

class Order
  include Counter::Changable
end

You may want to change the auto-generated name of the counter value. In this case, you can provide that with record_name.

class RiskyOrdersCounter < Counter::Definition
  calculated_value ->(customer) { customer.orders.risky.count }, association: :orders
  record_name :risky_customer_orders
end

Calculating a value from other counters

You may also need have a common need to calculate a value from other counters. For example, given counters for the number of purchases and the number of visits, you might want to calculate the conversion rate. You can do this with a calculate_from block.

class ConversionRateCounter < Counter::Definition
  count nil, as: "conversion_rate"

  calculated_from VisitsCounter, OrdersCounter do |visits, orders|
    (orders.value.to_f / visits.value) * 100
  end
end

This recalculates the conversion rate each time the visits or order counters are updated. If either dependant counter is not present, the calculation will not be run (i.e., visits and order will never be nil).

Defining a conditional counter

Conditional counters allow you to count a subset of an association, like just the premium product with a price >= 1000.

class Product < ApplicationRecord
  include Counter::Counters
  include Counter::Changable

  belongs_to :user

  scope :premium, -> { where("price >= 1000") }

  def premium?
    price >= 1000
  end
end

Conditional counters are more complex to define since we also need to specify when the counter should be incremented or decremented, for each create/delete/update.

class PremiumProductCounter < Counter::Definition
  # Define the association we're counting
  count :premium_products

  on :create do
    increment_if ->(product) { product.premium? }
  end

  on :delete do
    decrement_if ->(product) { product.premium? }
  end

  on :update do
    increment_if ->(product) {
      product.has_changed? :price, from: ->(price) { price < 1000 }, to: ->(price) { price >= 1000 }
    }

    decrement_if ->(product) {
      product.has_changed? :price, from: ->(price) { price >= 1000 }, to: ->(price) { price < 1000 }
    }
  end
end

There is a lot going on here!

First, we define the counter on a scoped association. This ensures that when we call counter.recalc() we will count using the association's SQL to get the correct results.

We also define several conditions that operate on the instance level, i.e. when we create/update/delete an instance. On create and delete we define a block to determine if the counter should be updated. In this case, we only increment the counter when a premium product is created, and only decrement it when a premium product is deleted.

update is more complex because there are two scenarios: either a product has been updated to make it premium or downgrade from premium to some other state. On update, we increment the counter if the price has gone above 1000; and decrement is the price has now gone below 1000.

We use the has_changed? helper to query the ActiveRecord previous_changes hash and check what has changed. You can specify either Procs or values for from/to. If you only specify a from value, to will default to "any value" (Counter::Any.instance)

Conditional counters work best with a single attribute. If the counter is conditional on e.g. confirmed and subscribed, the update tracking logic becomes very complex especially if the values are both updated at the same time. The solution to this is hopefully Rails generated columns in 7.1 so you can store a "subscribed_and_confirmed" column and check the value of that instead. Rails dirty tracking will need to work with generated columns though; see this PR.

Testing

Using Rspec

If you use RSpec, you can include Counter::RSpecMatchers on your helpers and test your counter definitions.

require "counter/rspec/matchers"

RSpec.configure do |config|
  config.include Counter::RSpecMatchers, type: :counter
end

Now you can test your counter definitions like so:

require "rails_helper"

RSpec.describe PremiumProductCounter, type: :counter do
  let(:store) { create(:store) }

  describe "on :create" do
    context "when the product is premium" do
      it "increments the counter" do
        expect { create(:product, :premium, store: store) }.to increment_counter_for(described_class, store)
      end
    end

    context "when the product is not premium" do
      it "doesn't increment the counter" do
        expect { create(:product, store: store) }.not_to increment_counter_for(described_class, store)
      end
    end
  end

  describe "on :delete" do
    context "when the product is premium" do
      it "decrements the counter" do
        expect { create(:product, :premium, store: store) }.to decrement_counter_for(described_class, store)
      end
    end

    context "when the product is not premium" do
      it "doesn't decrement the counter" do
        expect { create(:product, store: store) }.not_to decrement_counter_for(described_class, store)
      end
    end
  end
end

In production

test in prod or live a lie — Charity Majors

It's very useful to verify the accuracy of the counters in production, especially if you are concerned about conditional counters etc causing counter drift over time.

A simple approach would be:

Counter::Value.all.each &:correct!

If you have a large number of counters though it's best to take a sampling approach to randomly select a counter and verify that the value is correct

Counter::Value.sample_and_verify samples: 1000, verbose: true, on_error: :correct

Options:

  • scope — allows you to scope the counters to a particular model or set of models, e.g. scope: -> { where("name LIKE 'store-%'") }. By default, all counters are sampled
  • samples — the number of counters to sample. Default: 1000
  • verbose — print out the counter details and whether it was correct. Default: true
  • on_error — what to do when a counter is incorrect. :correct will correct the counter, :raise will raise an error, :log will log the error to Rails.logger. Default: :raise

Release Instructions

To release a new version of the counterwise gem:

  1. Merge changes: Ensure all changes are merged into the main branch via pull requests.

  2. Update version: Bump the version number in lib/counter/version.rb:

    module Counter
  VERSION = "x.y.z"  # Update to new version
end

  3. Commit and push version bump:

    git add lib/counter/version.rb
git commit -m "Bump version to x.y.z"
git push origin main

  4. Build and release:

    gem build counter.gemspec
gem push counterwise-x.y.z.gem

The gem will be available on RubyGems.org within a few minutes.

TODO

See the asociated project in Github but roughly I'm thinking:

  • Implement the background job pattern for incrementing counters
  • Hierarchical counters. For example, a Site sends many Newsletters and each Newsletter results in many EmailMessages. Each EmailMessage can be marked as spam. How do you create counters for how many spam emails were sent at the Newsletter level and the Site level?
  • Time-based counters for analytics. Instead of a User having one OrderRevenue counter, they would have an OrderRevenue counter for each day. These counters would then be used to produce a chart of their product revenue over the month. Not sure if these are just special counters or something else entirely? Do they use the same ActiveRecord model?
  • In a similar vein of supporting different value types, can we support HLL values? Instead of increment an integer we add the items hash to a HyperLogLog so we can count unique items. An example would be counting site visits in a time-based daily counter, then combine the daily counts and still obtain an estimated number of monthly unique visits. Again, not sure if this is the same ActiveRecord model or something different.
  • Actually start running this in production for basic use cases

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome, especially around naming, internal APIs, bug fixes, and additional features. Please open an issue first if you're thinking of adding a new feature so we can discuss it.

I'm unlikely to entertain suport for older Ruby or Rails versions, or databases other than Postgres.

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.

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