Pessimistic Locking

Locking::Pessimistic provides support for row-level locking using SELECT … FOR UPDATE and other lock types.

Chain ActiveRecord::Base#find to ActiveRecord::QueryMethods#lock to obtain an exclusive lock on the selected rows:

# select * from accounts where id=1 for update
Account.lock.find(1)

Call lock('some locking clause') to use a database-specific locking clause of your own such as ‘LOCK IN SHARE MODE’ or ‘FOR UPDATE NOWAIT’. Example:

Account.transaction do
  # select * from accounts where name = 'shugo' limit 1 for update nowait
  shugo = Account.lock("FOR UPDATE NOWAIT").find_by(name: "shugo")
  yuko = Account.lock("FOR UPDATE NOWAIT").find_by(name: "yuko")
  shugo.balance -= 100
  shugo.save!
  yuko.balance += 100
  yuko.save!
end

You can also use ActiveRecord::Base#lock! method to lock one record by id. This may be better if you don’t need to lock every row. Example:

Account.transaction do
  # select * from accounts where ...
  accounts = Account.where(...)
  account1 = accounts.detect { |account| ... }
  account2 = accounts.detect { |account| ... }
  # select * from accounts where id=? for update
  account1.lock!
  account2.lock!
  account1.balance -= 100
  account1.save!
  account2.balance += 100
  account2.save!
end

You can start a transaction and acquire the lock in one go by calling with_lock with a block. The block is called from within a transaction, the object is already locked. Example:

account = Account.first
account.with_lock do
  # This block is called within a transaction,
  # account is already locked.
  account.balance -= 100
  account.save!
end

Database-specific information on row locking:

MySQL: dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/en/innodb-locking-reads.html
PostgreSQL: www.postgresql.org/docs/current/interactive/sql-select.html#SQL-FOR-UPDATE-SHARE

Instance Public methods

lock!(lock = true)

Obtain a row lock on this record. Reloads the record to obtain the requested lock. Pass an SQL locking clause to append the end of the SELECT statement or pass true for “FOR UPDATE” (the default, an exclusive row lock). Returns the locked record.

📝 Source code

# File activerecord/lib/active_record/locking/pessimistic.rb, line 69
      def lock!(lock = true)
        if persisted?
          if has_changes_to_save?
            raise(<<-MSG.squish)
              Locking a record with unpersisted changes is not supported. Use
              `save` to persist the changes, or `reload` to discard them
              explicitly.
              Changed attributes: #{changed.map(&:inspect).join(', ')}.
            MSG
          end

          reload(lock: lock)
        end
        self
      end

🔎 See on GitHub

with_lock(*args)

Wraps the passed block in a transaction, reloading the object with a lock before yielding. You can pass the SQL locking clause as an optional argument (see lock!).

You can also pass options like requires_new:, isolation:, and joinable: to the wrapping transaction (see ActiveRecord::ConnectionAdapters::DatabaseStatements#transaction).