Summary

On large results of ActiveRecord queries, instanciation + GC of objects has a real cost of allocating memory, setting values, and after all GC garbage …

Inside a without_instanciation block, data is returned as hash of values. Objects instanciation process id skipped and though GC of theses objects too.

Performance up to 60% for large query results.

Of course, you no longer work with Ruby AR objects in this block.

Usage

users = User.without_instanciation { User.all }

#users is a array of hashes where each key is a User attribute

users.first['name'] #=> user name

Inside the model :

users = without_instanciation do 
          where(:name => "Matt")
        end
users.first['name']  #=> "Matt"

Install

#in your Gemfile

gem ‘without_instanciation’

MIT Licence

Copyright © 2012 Cantin Philippe

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.