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Multiple Databases with Active Record
=====================================

This guide covers using multiple databases with your Rails application.

After reading this guide you will know:

* How to setup your application for multiple databases.
* How automatic connection switching works.
* What features are supported and what's still a work in progress.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an application grows in popularity and usage you'll need to scale the application
to support your new users and their data. One way in which your application may need
to scale is on the database level. Rails now has support for multiple databases
so you don't have to store your data all in one place.

At this time the following features are supported:

* Multiple primary databases and a replica for each
* Automatic connection switching for the model you're working with
* Automatic swapping between the primary and replica depending on the HTTP verb
and recent writes
* Rails tasks for creating, dropping, migrating, and interacting with the multiple
databases

The following features are not (yet) supported:

* Sharding
* Joining across clusters
* Load balancing replicas
* Dumping schema caches for multiple databases

## Setting up your application

While Rails tries to do most of the work for you there are still some steps you'll
need to do to get your application ready for multiple databases.

Let's say we have an application with a single primary database and we need to add a
new database for some new tables we're adding. The name of the new database will be
"animals".

The `database.yml` looks like this:

```yaml
production:
  database: my_primary_database
  user: root
  adapter: mysql
```

Let's add a replica for the primary, a new writer called animals and a replica for that
as well. To do this we need to change our `database.yml` from a 2-tier to a 3-tier config.

```yaml
production:
  primary:
    database: my_primary_database
    user: root
    adapter: mysql
  primary_replica:
    database: my_primary_database
    user: root_readonly
    adapter: mysql
    replica: true
  animals:
    database: my_animals_database
    user: animals_root
    adapter: mysql
    migrations_paths: db/animals_migrate
  animals_replica:
    database: my_animals_database
    user: animals_readonly
    adapter: mysql
    replica: true
```

When using multiple databases there are a few important settings.

First, the database name for the primary and replica should be the same because they contain
the same data. Second, the username for the primary and replica should be different, and the
replica user's permissions should be to read and not write.

When using a replica database you need to add a `replica: true` entry to the replica in the
`database.yml`. This is because Rails otherwise has no way of knowing which one is a replica
and which one is the primary.

Lastly, for new primary databases you need to set the `migrations_paths` to the directory
where you will store migrations for that database. We'll look more at `migrations_paths`
later on in this guide.

Now that we have a new database, let's set up the model. In order to use the new database we
need to create a new abstract class and connect to the animals databases.

```ruby
class AnimalsBase < ApplicationRecord
  self.abstract_class = true

  connects_to database: { writing: :animals, reading: :animals_replica }
end
```
 Then we need to
update `ApplicationRecord` to be aware of our new replica.

```ruby
class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.abstract_class = true

  connects_to database: { writing: :primary, reading: :primary_replica }
end
```

By default Rails expects the database roles to be `writing` and `reading` for the primary
and replica respectively. If you have a legacy system you may already have roles set up that
you don't want to change. In that case you can set a new role name in your application config.

```ruby
config.active_record.writing_role = :default
config.active_record.reading_role = :readonly
```

It's important to connect to your database in a single model and then inherit from that model
for the tables rather than connect multiple individual models to the same database. Database
clients have a limit to the number of open connections there can be and if you do this it will
multiply the number of connections you have since Rails uses the model class name for the
connection specification name.

Now that we have the `database.yml` and the new model set up it's time to create the databases.
Rails 6.0 ships with all the rails tasks you need to use multiple databases in Rails.

You can run `rails -T` to see all the commands you're able to run. You should see the following:

```bash
$ rails -T
rails db:create                          # Creates the database from DATABASE_URL or config/database.yml for the ...
rails db:create:animals                  # Create animals database for current environment
rails db:create:primary                  # Create primary database for current environment
rails db:drop                            # Drops the database from DATABASE_URL or config/database.yml for the cu...
rails db:drop:animals                    # Drop animals database for current environment
rails db:drop:primary                    # Drop primary database for current environment
rails db:migrate                         # Migrate the database (options: VERSION=x, VERBOSE=false, SCOPE=blog)
rails db:migrate:animals                 # Migrate animals database for current environment
rails db:migrate:primary                 # Migrate primary database for current environment
rails db:migrate:status                  # Display status of migrations
rails db:migrate:status:animals          # Display status of migrations for animals database
rails db:migrate:status:primary          # Display status of migrations for primary database
```

Running a command like `rails db:create` will create both the primary and animals databases.
Note that there is no command for creating the users and you'll need to do that manually
to support the readonly users for your replicas. If you want to create just the animals
database you can run `rails db:create:animals`.

## Migrations

Migrations for multiple databases should live in their own folders prefixed with the
name of the database key in the configuration.

You also need to set the `migrations_paths` in the database configurations to tell Rails
where to find the migrations.

For example the `animals` database would look in the `db/animals_migrate` directory and
`primary` would look in `db/migrate`. Rails generators now take a `--database` option
so that the file is generated in the correct directory. The command can be run like so:

```bash
$ rails generate migration CreateDogs name:string --database animals
```

## Activating automatic connection switching

Finally, in order to use the read-only replica in your application you'll need to activate
the middleware for automatic switching.

Automatic switching allows the application to switch from the primary to replica or replica
to primary based on the HTTP verb and whether there was a recent write.

If the application is receiving a POST, PUT, DELETE, or PATCH request the application will
automatically write to the primary. For the specified time after the write the application
will read from the primary. For a GET or HEAD request the application will read from the
replica unless there was a recent write.

To activate the automatic connection switching middleware, add or uncomment the following
lines in your application config.

```ruby
config.active_record.database_selector = { delay: 2.seconds }
config.active_record.database_resolver = ActiveRecord::Middleware::DatabaseSelector::Resolver
config.active_record.database_resolver_context = ActiveRecord::Middleware::DatabaseSelector::Resolver::Session
```

Rails guarantees "read your own write" and will send your GET or HEAD request to the
primary if it's within the `delay` window. By default the delay is set to 2 seconds. You
should change this based on your database infrastructure. Rails doesn't guarantee "read
a recent write" for other users within the delay window and will send GET and HEAD requests
to the replicas unless they wrote recently.

The automatic connection switching in Rails is relatively primitive and deliberately doesn't
do a whole lot. The goal was a system that demonstrated how to do automatic connection
switching that was flexible enough to be customizable by app developers.

The setup in Rails allows you to easily change how the switching is done and what
parameters it's based on. Let's say you want to use a cookie instead of a session to
decide when to swap connections. You can write your own class:

```ruby
class MyCookieResolver
  # code for your cookie class
end
```

And then pass it to the middleware:

```ruby
config.active_record.database_selector = { delay: 2.seconds }
config.active_record.database_resolver = ActiveRecord::Middleware::DatabaseSelector::Resolver
config.active_record.database_resolver_context = MyCookieResolver
```

## Using manual connection switching

There are some cases where you may want your application to connect to a primary or a replica
and the automatic connection switching isn't adequate. For example, you may know that for a
particular request you always want to send the request to a replica, even when you are in a
POST request path.

To do this Rails provides a `connected_to` method that will switch to the connection you
need.

```ruby
ActiveRecord::Base.connected_to(role: :reading) do
  # all code in this block will be connected to the reading role
end
```

The "role" in the `connected_to` call looks up the connections that are connected on that
connection handler (or role). The `reading` connection handler will hold all the connections
that were connected via `connects_to` with the role name of `reading`.

Note that `connected_to` with a role will look up an existing connection and switch
using the connection specification name. This means that if you pass an unknown role
like `connected_to(role: :nonexistent)` you will get an error that says
`ActiveRecord::ConnectionNotEstablished (No connection pool with 'AnimalsBase' found
for the 'nonexistent' role.)`

## Caveats

### Sharding

As noted at the top, Rails doesn't (yet) support sharding. We had to do a lot of work
to support multiple databases for Rails 6.0. The lack of support for sharding isn't
an oversight, but does require additional work that didn't make it in for 6.0. For now
if you need sharding it may be advisable to continue using one of the many gems
that supports this.

### Load Balancing Replicas

Rails also doesn't support automatic load balancing of replicas. This is very
dependent on your infrastructure. We may implement basic, primitive load balancing
in the future, but for an application at scale this should be something your application
handles outside of Rails.

### Joining Across Databases

Applications cannot join across databases. Rails 6.1 will support using `has_many`
relationships and creating 2 queries instead of joining, but Rails 6.0 will require
you to split the joins into 2 selects manually.

### Schema Cache

If you use a schema cache and multiple databases you'll need to write an initializer
that loads the schema cache from your app. This wasn't an issue we could resolve in
time for Rails 6.0 but hope to have it in a future version soon.