| Path: | doc/release_notes/1.3.txt | 
| Last Update: | Sat Oct 02 06:22:54 -0600 2010 | 
The latest release of sequel_model includes a new associations functionality written by Jeremy Evans which replaces the old relations code in previous versions. Please note that this version is not completely backward-compatible and you should therefore upgrade with caution.
The new implementation supports three kinds of relations: one_to_many, many_to_one and many_to_many, which correspond to has_many, belongs_to and has_and_belongs_to_many relations in ActiveRecord. In fact, the new implementation includes aliases for ActiveRecord assocation macros and is basically compatible with ActiveRecord conventions. It also supports DRY implicit class name references. Here‘s a simple example:
  class Author < Sequel::Model
    has_many :books # equivalent to one_to_many
  end
  class Book < Sequel::Model
    belongs_to :author # equivalent to many_to_one
    has_and_belongs_to_many :categories # equivalent to many_to_many
  end
  class Category < Sequel::Model
    has_and_belongs_to_many :books
  end
These macros will create the following methods:
Book#remove_category
Unlike ActiveRecord, one_to_many and many_to_many association methods return a dataset:
a = Author[1234] a.books.sql #=> 'SELECT * FROM books WHERE (author_id = 1234)'
You can also tell Sequel to cache the association result set and return it as an array:
  class Author < Sequel::Model
    has_many :books, :cache => true
  end
  Author[1234].books.class #=> Array
You can of course bypass the defaults and specify class names and key names:
  class Node < Sequel::Model
    belongs_to :parent, :class => Node
    belongs_to :session, :key => :producer_id
  end
Another useful option is :order, which sets the order for the association dataset:
  class Author < Sequel::Model
    has_many :books, :order => :title
  end
  Author[1234].books.sql #=> 'SELECT * FROM books WHERE (author_id =
1234) ORDER BY title‘
More information about associations can be found in the Sequel documentation.
unique in order to satisfy MySQL (171).
compress option for mysql connection by default (172).
statement and raise Error::InvalidStatement with the offending SQL and error message (188).
nil is specified (190).
(192).