[erlang-questions] Reading from mnesia

[Martin Karlsson]

Hi Oscar,

Lets start with looking at your record:

> -record(message,{leido, from, to, text}).

The first attribute in the record is the primary key.

The primary key of message is 'leido'. But 'leido' seems to be a
boolean which doesn't make much sense. I.e. you can only have 2
entries in your table.

You should use something else, either unique: For example a timestamp
or a combination of To/From and a timestamp or change your tables to a
bag type and use something like 'to' or a unique user id as key.

For example:
-record(message, {id, leido, from, to, text}). Where id is the message
id or something like that.


> read_message(To)->
>     Trans = fun() ->  mnesia:read({message,To}) end,
>     mnesia:transaction(Trans).

mnesia:read reads using the primary key but as the primary key is
leido not *to* you will not get anything back.

To read data out of the table you can:
*  use a known primary key (for example 'id' if that is your primary key)

* or add an index to the table (for example on to) and do an index_read

* or use other mechanisms such as qlc. (See below)


> Another question is i want to read only messages where leido = false, ¿how
> can i do it?
You can use:

* qlc (Query List Comprehensions. Which lets you filter and sort data
from mnesia tables in a SQL like manner).
* mnesia:select - A lower level utility which forces you to learn
about MatchSpecs which are handy but slightly awkward to work with ;)

with 'qlc' you'd do something like:

mnesia:transcation(qlc:e(qlc:q([M || M <- mnesia:table(message),
M#message.leido =:= false ])))

with 'select' something like:
MatchSpec =[ {#message{leido = '$1', to = '_', from = '_', text='_'},
                       [ {'=:=', '$1', false} ],
                       [ '$_']}],
mnesia:transaction(mnesia:select(message, MatchSpec))

I haven't tested the code so it may not be fully functional but
hopefully points you in the right direction.

Helpful links:

erl -man mnesia
erl -man qlc
http://learnyousomeerlang.com/mnesia
http://erlang.org/doc/apps/mnesia/users_guide.html

Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Martin