We’re taking ROM to the next level, and we need your help.Become a patron today

Learn

Previous versions:

Version 4.0

How to Build a ROM Adapter » Adapters

ROM makes very little assumptions about its adapters that's why it is simple to build a custom adapter that will provide access to a specific datasource.

A ROM adapter must provide the following components:

  • ROM::Gateway subclass that implements required interface
  • ROM::Relation subclass that exposes adapter-specific interface for queries and writing

In addition to that the adapter may also provide:

  • ROM::Commands::Create subclass for create operation
  • ROM::Commands::Update subclass for update operation
  • ROM::Commands::Delete subclass for delete operation

Let's build an adapter for a plain Ruby array, because why not.

Gateway

Adapter's gateway is used by ROM to retrieve datasets and inject them into adapter's relations as their data-access backends. Here's a simple implementation:

require 'rom'

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    class Gateway < ROM::Gateway
      attr_reader :datasets

      def initialize
        @datasets = Hash.new { |h, k| h[k] = [] }
      end

      def dataset(name)
        datasets[name]
      end

      def dataset?(name)
        datasets.key?(name)
      end
    end
  end
end

gateway = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Gateway.new

users = gateway.dataset(:users)
tasks = gateway.dataset(:tasks)

gateway.dataset?(:users) # true
gateway.dataset?(:tasks) # true

This allows ROM to ask for specific datasets from your gateway.

Relation

Adapter-specific relation must exist because it can provide various features that only make sense for a concrete adapter. It can automatically forward method calls to the underlaying dataset in order to expose "native" interface to the relation.

Since our datasets are just arrays, we can expose various array methods to the relation using forward macro:

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    class Relation < ROM::Relation
      # we must configure adapter identifier here
      adapter :array

      forward :select, :reject
    end
  end
end

users = gateway.dataset(:users)

users << { name: 'Jane' }
users << { name: 'John' }

relation = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Relation.new(gateway.dataset(:users))

relation.select { |tuple| tuple[:name] == 'Jane' }.inspect
# #<ROM::ArrayAdapter::Relation dataset=[{:name=>"Jane"}]>

Please remember about setting adapter identifier - it is used by ROM to infer component types specific to a given adapter. It's essential during the setup.

Registering Your Adapter

The adapter must register itself under specific identifier which then can be used to set up ROM components for that particular adapter.

To register your adapter:

ROM.register_adapter(:array, ROM::ArrayAdapter)

This is it! Now our array adapter can be setup using ROM:

configuration= ROM::Configuration.new(:array)

class Users < ROM::Relation[:array]
  def by_name(name)
    select { |user| user[:name] == name }
  end
end

configuration.register_relation(Users)

rom = ROM.container(configuration)

users = rom.gateways[:default].dataset(:users)

users << { name: 'Jane' }
users << { name: 'John' }

rom.relations[:users].by_name('Jane').to_a
# [{:name=>"Jane"}]

Commands

Adapter commands are optional because you don't always want to change data in a given datastore. If your datastore supports create/update/delete operations you can provide an interface for that using commands.

ROM adheres to the CQRS but it doesn't enforce it, this means that relations do implement CRUD and commands are just thin wrappers around CUD and they depend on relations.

By convention all command classes live under ROM::YourAdapter::Commands namespace.

Common Command Behavior

Every ROM command has a couple of features available out-of-the-box:

  • relation - returns current relation for the current command
  • source - original relation that was injected to the current command initially
  • >>(other) - composes one command with another
  • with(input) - auto-curries a command with provided input
  • combine(*others) - builds a command graph with other commands as nodes
  • one? - returns true if a command returns a single tuple
  • many?- returns true if a command returns more than one tuple

Extending Relation for Commands

Commands will require an interface to insert, delete and update data and also count.

Let's provide that:

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    class Relation < ROM::Relation
      adapter :array

      # reading
      forward :select, :reject

      # writing
      forward :<<, :delete

      def count
        dataset.size
      end
    end
  end
end

Commands::Create

To implement a create command:

require 'rom/commands/create' # require what you require!

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    module Commands
      class Create < ROM::Commands::Create
        # Just like in case of Relation, we must configure adapter identifier
        adapter :array

        def execute(tuples)
          tuples.each { |tuple| relation << tuple }
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

users = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Relation.new(gateway.dataset(:users))
create_users = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Commands::Create.new(users)

create_users.call([{ name: 'Jane' }])

puts users.to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane"}]

Commands::Delete

To implement a delete command:

require 'rom/commands/delete'

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    module Commands
      class Delete < ROM::Commands::Delete
        adapter :array

        def execute
          relation.each { |tuple| source.delete(tuple) }
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

delete_users = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Commands::Delete.new(users)

delete_users.call

puts users.to_a.inspect
# []

Notice that here delete command yields tuples from its current relation but deletes it from the source relation, since this is our canonical source of data.

Commands::Update

To implement an update command:

require 'rom/commands/update'

module ROM
  module ArrayAdapter
    module Commands
      class Update < ROM::Commands::Update
        adapter :array

        def execute(attributes)
          relation.each { |tuple| tuple.update(attributes) }
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

update_users = ROM::ArrayAdapter::Commands::Update.new(users)

update_users.call(age: 21)

puts users.to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane", :age=>21}]

Here we simply rely on Hash#update which mutates tuples using the input attributes.

Putting It All Together

Once your command classes are defined ROM will pick them up from your namespace and they will be available during setup:

configuration = ROM::Configuration.new(:array)

class Users < ROM::Relation[:array]
  def by_name(name)
    select { |user| user[:name] == name }
  end
end

class CreateUser < ROM::Commands::Create[:array]
  relation :users
  register_as :create
end

class UpdateUser < ROM::Commands::Update[:array]
  relation :users
  result :one
  register_as :update
end

class DeleteUser < ROM::Commands::Delete[:array]
  relation :users
  result :one
  register_as :delete
end

configuration.register_relation(Users)

configuration.register_command(CreateUser)
configuration.register_command(UpdateUser)
configuration.register_command(DeleteUser)

rom = ROM.create_container(configuration)

create_users = rom.commands[:users][:create]
update_user = rom.commands[:users][:update]
delete_user = rom.commands[:users][:delete]

create_users.call([{ name: 'Jane' }, { name: 'John' }])

puts rom.relations[:users].to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane"}, {:name=>"John"}]


puts rom.relations[:users].by_name('Jane').to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane"}]


update_user.by_name('Jane').call(name: 'Jane Doe')

puts rom.relations[:users].to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane Doe"}, {:name=>"John"}]


delete_user.by_name('John').call

puts rom.relations[:users].to_a.inspect
# [{:name=>"Jane Doe"}]
© 2014-2025 Ruby Object Mapper. Design by @angeloashmore. Logo by @kapowaz.