Skip to content


Subversion checkout URL

You can clone with
Download ZIP
Database Sharding for ActiveRecord
Pull request Compare This branch is 306 commits behind tchandy:master.

Fetching latest commit…

Cannot retrieve the latest commit at this time

Failed to load latest commit information.


Octopus - Easy Database Sharding for ActiveRecord

Octopus is a better way to do Database Sharding in ActiveRecord. Sharding allows multiple databases in the same rails application. While there are several projects that implement Sharding (e.g. DbCharmer, DataFabric, MultiDb), each project has its own limitations. The main goal of octopus project is to provide a better way of doing Database Sharding.

Feature list:

The api is designed to be simple as possible. Octopus focuses on the end user, giving the power of multiple databases but with reliable code and flexibility. Octopus is focused on Rails 3, but is compatible with Rails 2.x.

Octopus supports:

  • Sharding (with multiple shards, and grouped shards).
  • Replication (Master/slave support, with multiple slaves).
  • Moving data between shards with migrations.
  • Tools to manage database configurations. (soon)


When using replication, all writes queries will be sent to master, and read queries to slaves. More info could be found at: Wiki


When using sharding, you need to specify which shard to send the query. Octopus supports selecting the shard inside a controller, or manually in each object. More could be found at Wiki

Replication + Sharding

Replication + Sharding isn't supported yet. This is on our TODO list and will be done ASAP. If you need, feel free to fork and implement it.


Rails 2.x

Install the octopus gem:

sudo gem install ar-octopus

Add this line to enviroment.rb:

config.gem 'ar-octopus', :lib => "octopus"

Rails 3.x

Add this line to Gemfile:

gem 'ar-octopus'

Runs a bundle install:

bundle install

How to use Octopus?

First, you need to create a config file, shards.yml, inside your config/ directory. to see the syntax and how this file should look, please checkout this page on wiki.


Octopus adds a method to each AR Class and object: the using method is used to select the shard like this:

User.where(:name => "Thiago").limit(3).using(:slave_one)

Octopus also supports queries within a block. When you pass a block to the using method, all queries inside the block will be sent to the specified shard.

Octopus.using(:slave_two) do
  User.create(:name => "Mike")

Each model instance knows which shard it came from so this will work automatically:

# This will find the user in the shard1
@user = User.using(:shard1).find_by_name("Joao")

# This will find the user in the master database
@user2 = User.find_by_name("Jose")

#Sets the name = "Mike"

# Save the user in the correct shard, shard1.


In migrations, you also have access to the using method. The syntax is basically the same. This migration will run in the brazil and canada shards.

class CreateUsersOnBothShards < ActiveRecord::Migration
  using(:brazil, :canada)

  def self.up
    User.create!(:name => "Both")

  def self.down

You also could send a migration to a group of shards. This migration will be sent to all shards that belongs to history_shards group, specified in shards.yml:

class CreateUsersOnMultiplesGroups < ActiveRecord::Migration

  def self.up
    User.create!(:name => "MultipleGroup")

  def self.down

Rails Controllers

If you want to send a specified action, or all actions from a controller, to a specific shard, use this syntax:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  around_filter :select_shard

  def select_shard(&block)
    Octopus.using(:brazil, &block)

To see the complete list of features and syntax, please check out our Wiki Want to see sample rails applications using octopus features? please check it out: Sharding Example and Replication Example. Also, we have an example that shows how to use Octopus without Rails: Octopus + Sinatra Example.


Occasionally, an application might lose a connection to a database; when this happens, ActiveRecord will raise an exception. Add the following line to your application configuration if you are experiencing this issue:

verify_connection: true

This will tell Octopus to verify the connection before sending the query.

Mixing Octopus with the Rails multiple database model

If you want to set a custom connection to a specific model, use this syntax:

#This class sets its own connection
# establish_connection will not work, use octopus_establish_connection instead.
class CustomConnection < ActiveRecord::Base
  octopus_establish_connection(:adapter => "mysql", :database => "octopus_shard2")

Set table names

If you want to use specific table names, please visit: this link

Contributing with Octopus

Contributors are welcome! To run the test suite, you need mysql, postgresql and sqlite3 installed. This is what you need to setup your Octopus development environment:

git clone
cd octopus
bundle install
bundle exec rake db:prepare
bundle exec rake appraisal:install
bundle exec rake spec

This command will run the spec suite for all rails versions supported (Rails 2.3, Rails 3.0 and Rails 3.1). To run our integrations tests inside sample_app, you need to following commands:

cd sample_app
bundle install

If you are having issues running the octopus spec suite, verify your database users and passwords match those inside the config files and your permissions are correct.


Mailing List:


This project is sponsored by the Ruby Summer of Code, and my mentors Mike Perham and Amit Agarwal.


Copyright (c) 2010 Thiago Pradi, released under the MIT license.

Something went wrong with that request. Please try again.