Active Record Transactions

Transactions are protective blocks where SQL statements are only permanent if they can all succeed as one atomic action. The classic example is a transfer between two accounts where you can only have a deposit if the withdrawal succeeded and vice versa. Transactions enforce the integrity of the database and guard the data against program errors or database break-downs. So basically you should use transaction blocks whenever you have a number of statements that must be executed together or not at all.

For example:

  ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
    david.withdrawal(100)
    mary.deposit(100)
  end

This example will only take money from David and give it to Mary if neither withdrawal nor deposit raise an exception. Exceptions will force a ROLLBACK that returns the database to the state before the transaction began. Be aware, though, that the objects will not have their instance data returned to their pre-transactional state.

Different Active Record classes in a single transaction

Though the transaction class method is called on some Active Record class, the objects within the transaction block need not all be instances of that class. This is because transactions are per-database connection, not per-model.

In this example a balance record is transactionally saved even though transaction is called on the Account class:

  Account.transaction do
    balance.save!
    account.save!
  end

The transaction method is also available as a model instance method. For example, you can also do this:

  balance.transaction do
    balance.save!
    account.save!
  end

Transactions are not distributed across database connections

A transaction acts on a single database connection. If you have multiple class-specific databases, the transaction will not protect interaction among them. One workaround is to begin a transaction on each class whose models you alter:

  Student.transaction do
    Course.transaction do
      course.enroll(student)
      student.units += course.units
    end
  end

This is a poor solution, but fully distributed transactions are beyond the scope of Active Record.

save and destroy are automatically wrapped in a transaction

Both save and destroy come wrapped in a transaction that ensures that whatever you do in validations or callbacks will happen under its protected cover. So you can use validations to check for values that the transaction depends on or you can raise exceptions in the callbacks to rollback, including after_* callbacks.

As a consequence changes to the database are not seen outside your connection until the operation is complete. For example, if you try to update the index of a search engine in after_save the indexer won’t see the updated record. The after_commit callback is the only one that is triggered once the update is committed. See below.

Exception handling and rolling back

Also have in mind that exceptions thrown within a transaction block will be propagated (after triggering the ROLLBACK), so you should be ready to catch those in your application code.

One exception is the ActiveRecord::Rollback exception, which will trigger a ROLLBACK when raised, but not be re-raised by the transaction block.

Warning: one should not catch ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid exceptions inside a transaction block. ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid exceptions indicate that an error occurred at the database level, for example when a unique constraint is violated. On some database systems, such as PostgreSQL, database errors inside a transaction cause the entire transaction to become unusable until it’s restarted from the beginning. Here is an example which demonstrates the problem:

  # Suppose that we have a Number model with a unique column called 'i'.
  Number.transaction do
    Number.create(:i => 0)
    begin
      # This will raise a unique constraint error...
      Number.create(:i => 0)
    rescue ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid
      # ...which we ignore.
    end

    # On PostgreSQL, the transaction is now unusable. The following
    # statement will cause a PostgreSQL error, even though the unique
    # constraint is no longer violated:
    Number.create(:i => 1)
    # => "PGError: ERROR:  current transaction is aborted, commands
    #     ignored until end of transaction block"
  end

One should restart the entire transaction if an ActiveRecord::StatementInvalid occurred.

Nested transactions

transaction calls can be nested. By default, this makes all database statements in the nested transaction block become part of the parent transaction. For example:

  User.transaction do
    User.create(:username => 'Kotori')
    User.transaction do
      User.create(:username => 'Nemu')
      raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
    end
  end

  User.find(:all)  # => empty

It is also possible to requires a sub-transaction by passing :requires_new => true. If anything goes wrong, the database rolls back to the beginning of the sub-transaction without rolling back the parent transaction. For example:

  User.transaction do
    User.create(:username => 'Kotori')
    User.transaction(:requires_new => true) do
      User.create(:username => 'Nemu')
      raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
    end
  end

  User.find(:all)  # => Returns only Kotori

Most databases don’t support true nested transactions. At the time of writing, the only database that we’re aware of that supports true nested transactions, is MS-SQL. Because of this, Active Record emulates nested transactions by using savepoints. See http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/savepoints.html for more information about savepoints.

Callbacks

There are two types of callbacks associated with committing and rolling back transactions: after_commit and after_rollback.

after_commit callbacks are called on every record saved or destroyed within a transaction immediately after the transaction is committed. after_rollback callbacks are called on every record saved or destroyed within a transaction immediately after the transaction or savepoint is rolled back.

These callbacks are useful for interacting with other systems since you will be guaranteed that the callback is only executed when the database is in a permanent state. For example, after_commit is a good spot to put in a hook to clearing a cache since clearing it from within a transaction could trigger the cache to be regenerated before the database is updated.

Caveats

If you’re on MySQL, then do not use DDL operations in nested transactions blocks that are emulated with savepoints. That is, do not execute statements like ‘CREATE TABLE’ inside such blocks. This is because MySQL automatically releases all savepoints upon executing a DDL operation. When transaction is finished and tries to release the savepoint it created earlier, a database error will occur because the savepoint has already been automatically released. The following example demonstrates the problem:

  Model.connection.transaction do                           # BEGIN
    Model.connection.transaction(:requires_new => true) do  # CREATE SAVEPOINT active_record_1
      Model.connection.create_table(...)                    # active_record_1 now automatically released
    end                                                     # RELEASE savepoint active_record_1
                                                            # ^^^^ BOOM! database error!
  end

Note that "TRUNCATE" is also a MySQL DDL statement!

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November 11, 2011
3 thanks

Catching and throwing -- don't!

@wiseleyb and @glosakti, neither of your suggestions are necessary, and both are bad practices.

This test:

test "transactions" do
  assert_raises ZeroDivisionError do
    User.transaction do
      1/0
    end
  end
end

passes just fine on its own, with the transaction rolled back as you’d expect. No need to hack something ugly together.

March 18, 2015
0 thanks

Transactions and Stale ORM Data

Consider the following:

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  foo = Foo.new
  foo.save # succeeds

  bar = Bar.new
  bar.save # failure, validation problem
end
March 18, 2015
0 thanks

Transactions and Stale ORM Data

Consider the following:

foo = Foo.new
bar = Bar.new

ActiveRecord::Base.transaction do
  foo.save! # succeeds
  bar.save! # failure, validation problem
end

foo.persisted? # true (!)

foo was not permanently stored in the database, but it was transiently saved, and this is reflected in the ActiveRecord model still in memory. But if you try

foo.reload # raises ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound

Don’t let stale data confuse you after using transactions!

Edited to add: This particular example does not succeed in reproducing the issue I encountered, which involved a slightly more complicated set of nested transactions. I haven’t managed to produce a simple test case where stale data remains in the model, but I have definitely experienced it in my app.

January 3, 2011
0 thanks

Throw error after rollback

If you want to throw the exception after rolling back you can do something like this:

Company.transaction do
  user.save
  company.save
  x = 1/0
rescue
  exp = $!
  begin
    raise ActiveRecord::Rollback
  rescue
  end
  raise exp
end
June 1, 2011 - (>= v3.0.0)
0 thanks

Catching rollback and re-raise exception

In response to wiseleyb, I don’t believe that you could put “rescue” in a transaction block, let alone catching ActiveRecord::Rollback. It would lead you to an “unexpected kRESCUE” error.

I think this is more appropriate.

def start_transaction
  Company.transaction do
    # don't forget the bang to make sure it raise
    # exception or the transaction won't rollback
    user.save!
    company.save!
    x=1/0

    return true
  end

  # re-raise exception here
  raise "Exception!"
end

Then you could call the method in another place, and it would raise rollback and other exception.

...
  # would return the "Exception!" if rollback occurs
  # it would also still trigger another exception other
  # than rollback.
  start_transaction
...