Using Waves Without An ORM

Although Waves explicitly supports using the Sequel ORM for accessing a database, you aren’t required to, and if you don’t, you don’t have to load the Sequel codebase either. In fact, you can use any ORM you want (including ActiveRecord) or no ORM at all (Sequel, for example, makes it easy to leverage many of Sequel’s power without using their ORM).

A future release of Waves will also include explicit support for a very lightweight file-based storage mechanism called Filebase. Filebase (itself unreleased) is well-suited for document-oriented applications, like content management applications. Weighing in at less than 50 lines of code, it gives you many of the benefits of using a database without the overhead of using an ORM and conventional database.

In any event, removing the Sequel dependencies is easy:

• First, change the default.rb file in models so that it no longer inherits from Sequel::Model.

• Then edit your application module file (ex: blog.rb) so that it doesn’t require Sequel.

• Next, comment out the when :Models clause of the case statement in the autoload initialization.

• Finally, comment out the database method defined on the application (or replace it with one that uses your chosen ORM).

When you’re done, your application initialization file might something like:

# require 'sequel'
module Blog

	extend Autocreate; extend Autoload; extend Reloadable
	autoload true; directories :lib

	[ :Configurations, :Models, :Views, :Controllers, :Helpers ].each do | name |
		autocreate( name, Module.new ) do

      # dynamically access module constants
			def self.[]( cname )
			  eval("#{name}::#{cname.to_s.camel_case}")
			end

		  # first try to load and only create if that fails
		  # which means install autoload *after* autocreate
		  extend Autocreate; extend Autoload

		  # autoload any files in appropriately named directories
		  # exampe: models/blog.rb for Blog
			autoload true; directories name.to_s.snake_case

			# autocreate declarations ...
			case name
		  # don't autocreate configs
		  when :Configurations then nil
		  # set the dataset for Models
		  # when :Models
			#  autocreate true, eval("Blog::Models::Default") do
			#    set_dataset Blog.database[ basename.snake_case.plural.intern ]
			#  end
			# everything else just use the exemplar
			else
			  autocreate true, eval("Blog::#{name}::Default")
			end

		end

	end

	# accessor methods for modules and other key application objects ...
	class << self
		def config ; Waves::Server.config rescue nil || Waves::Console.config ; end
		# def database ; @database ||= Sequel.mysql( config.database ) ; end
		def configurations ; Blog::Configurations ; end
		def controllers ; Blog::Controllers ; end
		def models ; Blog::Models ; end
		def helpers ; Blog::Helpers ; end
		def views ; Blog::Views ; end
	end

end

Of course, YMMV based on what database / ORM solution you prefer (if any).