Computing a virtual field from multiple fields in schema

[benjamin...@gmail.com]

Hi,

Is there a way to compute virtual fields with other non virtual fields in a schema when loading from the database?

In my case I need to convert an amount and currency into a Money struct. The only way I see is to store a map in a single field, but I would like to keep this in multiple columns for SQL order, select and index.

I'm thinking about something similar to this:

```

defmodule Myapp.Cost do

  use Ecto.Schema

  alias Myapp.{Money, Product, Purchase}

  schema "cost" do

    belongs_to :product,          Product

    has_many :purchases,      Purchase

    field :amount,                     :integer,        null: false

    field :currency,                   :string,           null: false,   size: 3

    field :cost                           Money.Type, virtual: true, from: [:amount, :currency]

    timestamps()

  end

end

defmodule Myapp.Money.Type do

  @behaviour Ecto.Type

  def type, do: :any

  # Not sure if needed as it's a virtual field?

  def cast(_), do: :error

  # This is how I imagine computing the virtual field could work

  def load([amount, currency]) when is_integer(amount) and is_binary(currency)  do

    money = Money.from_integer(amount, currency)

    {:ok, money}

  end

  def load(_), do: :error

  # Not sure if needed as it's a virtual field?

  def dump(_), do: :error

end```

```

iex> Myapp.Repo.get_by(Myapp.Cost, id: 1)

%Myapp.Cost{id: 1, amount: 100, currency: "USD", cost: %Money{amount: 100, currency: :USD}}

iex> Myapp.Repo.get_by(Myapp.Purchase, id: 1) |> Myapp.Repo.preload(:cost)

%Myapp.Purchase{id: 1, cost: %Myapp.Cost{id: 1, amount: 100, currency: "USD", cost: %Money{amount: 100, currency: :USD}}}

```

[Ivan Yurov]

You can simply use something like select_merge:

```

select_merge(query, [c], %{cost: fragment("type_conversion_and_concatenation_function_that_your_db_provides(?, ?)", c.amount, c.currency)}

```

And your virtual field will be populated. But this will only work in simple cases that aren't involving application logic.

[benjamin...@gmail.com]

Thanks a lot, Ivan Yurov for your response but as you say yourself it only works in simple cases and that is not really what I'm looking for

I would argue that this could make Ecto way more powerful if we could do these kinds of post hooks.

[Ivan Youroff]

I see what you mean, but I believe Elixir people would argue that this kind of computed attributes is something from OOP world, not FP. This might be implemented as a function that would inject this attribute inside of representation layer: JaSerializer/Absinthe or HTML.

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Kind regards,

Ivan Yurov