AREL: writing complex update statements with from clause - postgresql

Question

I tried looking for an example of using Arel::UpdateManager to form an update statement with a from clause (as in UPDATE t SET t.itty = "b" FROM .... WHERE ...), couldn.t find any. The way I've seen it, Arel::UpdateManager sets the main engine on initialization and allows to set the various fields and values to update. Is there actually a way to do this?
Another aside would be to find out how to express Postgres posix regex matching into ARel, but this might be impossible by now.

Answer 1

As far as I see the current version of arel gem is not support FROM keyword for the sql query. You can generate a query using the SET, and WHERE keywords only, like:
UPDATE t SET t.itty = "b" WHERE ...
and the code, which copies a value from field2 to field1 for the units table, will be like:
relation = Unit.all
um = Arel::UpdateManager.new(relation.engine)
um.table(relation.table)
um.ast.wheres = relation.wheres.to_a
um.set(Arel::Nodes::SqlLiteral.new('field1 = "field2"'))
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(um.to_sql)
Exactly you can use the additional method to update a relation. So we create the Arel's UpdateManager, assigning to it the table, where clause, and values to set. Values shell be passed to the method as an argument. Then we need to add FROM keyword to the generated SQL request, we add it only if we have access to external table of the specified one by the UPDATE clause itself. And at the last we executes the query. So we get:
def update_relation!(relation, values)
um = Arel::UpdateManager.new(relation.engine)
um.table(relation.table)
um.ast.wheres = relation.wheres.to_a
um.set(values)
sql = um.to_sql
# appends FROM field to the query if needed
m = sql.match(/WHERE/)
tables = relation.arel.source.to_a.select {|v| v.class == Arel::Table }.map(&:name).uniq
tables.shift
sql.insert(m.begin(0), "FROM #{tables.join(",")} ") if m && !tables.empty?
# executes the query
ActiveRecord::Base.connection.execute(sql)
end
The you can issue the the relation update as:
values = Arel::Nodes::SqlLiteral.new('field1 = "field2", field2 = NULL')
relation = Unit.not_rejected.where(Unit.arel_table[:field2].not_eq(nil))
update_relation!(relation, values)