Records should be called something else

[jnicklas]

Sorry I am spamming the issue tracker with a lot of dumb stuff. Just had this realization.

When using a datastore that isn't an ORM/ODM, it doesn't really make sense to talk about records. Since Raptor wants to make no assumption as to how we're structuring our app, and it would make a lot of sense for the "Record" in a lot of cases not to map 1-1 to a database row/document, I think it should have a different name.

Resource is kind of already taken by raptors nomenclature, otherwise that would have been good, maybe Model is better? What do you think?

[garybernhardt]

"Model" scares me because Rails programmers are going to see it and think "Oh—the thing that maps to my database and contains my entire application's logic". :(

What about "subject"? It kinda makes sense... most of the Ruby code is just building up the thing we're talking about, then the presenter/view/template layer talks about it. Might be confusing when using RSpec's "subject" to mean other things, though. cc @tcrayford

[tcrayford]

I dislike subject (compared to record anyway), and model has the whole rails connotations problem. I like records a whole bunch.

[garybernhardt]

I just realized that @jnicklas is talking about the Record class, not the internal name. I have my head stuck in the other design discussion thread. To separate the things:

1. Raptor needs a name for the things returned from route delegates (interactors). "Response model" is the traditional name, but I'd prefer one word. This is what I was thinking of when I said "subject".
2. Raptor needs a class name for the default routes to delegate to. E.g., create routes currently delegate to MyResource::Record. If/when the great module inversion of How should applications be structured? #23 lands, this would become Records::MyResource.

The default delegate targets are going to depend on the storage system used (AR vs. Ohm vs. Mongoid are going to need very different names); it's probably going to need to be pluggable. Personally, I find "Record" a decent default, because the term makes sense for all of those system. "Row" wouldn't but I think it's fair to call a Mongo document or a Redis key a "record" in their respective databases.

[tcrayford]

In which case, I'm down with subject.

[garybernhardt]

Done; @tcrayford changed it to subject.