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I admit, I’ve never been a big fan of named_scope or just scope as it’s been renamed in Rails 3. When it was first introduced I remember not being particularly impressed, as a Merb acolyte we’d had this chaining functionality in Datamapper for ages, only it was much better. In fact in Datamapper, every query you could construct was chainable. Thankfully in Rails 3 and ActiveRecord 3, queries have finally grown up so that everything is now chainable in ActiveRecord too:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  def self.alphabetically
    order(:first_name, :last_name)
  end

  def self.active
    where(:archived_at => nil)
  end
end

Person.active # => [...]
Person.alphabetically.active # => [...]

In this case it seems like the scope method will give us much nicer more concise syntax:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  scope :alphabetically, order(:first_name, :last_name)
  scope :active, where(:archived_at => nil)
end

But imagine if we want to add a new kind of scope to find user’s with a given last name:

scope :by_last_name, lambda { |name| where(:last_name => name) }

It’s getting a bit less nice, aside from the gratuitous lambda, it’s still pretty okay though.

What I believe is wrong with this code though is that it is essentially recreating Ruby functionality. We’re defining a method called by_last_name which will execute some code when called, only we’re doing it through meta-programming for essentially no reason at all. The above could have been written as:

def self.by_last_name(name); where(:last_name => name); end

And it would have worked exactly the same. The only difference that I can tell is that scope allows you to define extension methods by passing a block, which I’m sure no one has ever used, since it’s so completely useless.

The problem becomes even more striking when the code is even the slightest bit complicated.

scope :for_user, lambda { |user|
  if user.admin?
    where(:active => true)
  else
    where(:active => true, :user_id => user.id)
  end
}

That’s just horrible.

def self.for_user(user)
  if user.admin?
    where(:active => true)
  else
    where(:active => true, :user_id => user.id)
  end
end

This looks much more like Ruby code and less like some kind of weird JavaScript concoction.

Stop replicating functionality that already exists, stop using scope. It is obsolete.

Inspired by this post on how to create mirror images with Paperclip, I decided to write up how to do the same thing with CarrierWave. It’s a nice example of how CarrierWave’s Uploader class makes manipulating files very easy.

This assumes you’ve already generated an uploader and probably mounted it on a model somewhere. If this doesn’t make sense to you, check out the CarrierWave documentation.

Add this method to you uploader:

def add_mirror_effect(mirror_length)
  manipulate! do |img|
    mirror_rows = img.rows * mirror_length

    gradient = Magick::GradientFill.new(0, 0, mirror_rows, 0, "#888", "#000")
    gradient = Magick::Image.new(img.columns, mirror_rows, gradient)
    gradient.matte = false

    flipped = img.flip
    flipped.matte = true
    flipped.composite!(gradient, 0, 0, Magick::CopyOpacityCompositeOp)

    new_frame = Magick::Image.new(img.columns, img.rows + mirror_rows)
    new_frame.composite!(img, 0, 0, Magick::OverCompositeOp)
    new_frame.composite!(flipped, 0, img.rows, Magick::OverCompositeOp)
    new_frame
  end
end

This will first create a gradient. It will then flip the image and use that gradient as the alpha channel for the flipped image. Finally it will create a new image, putting the original, and the faded out mirror image together.

Next, add a version to your Uploader, which calls the new add_mirror_effect method:

version :with_mirror do
  process :add_mirror_effect => 0.2
end

That’s it! The end result should look something like this:

class AvatarUploader < CarrierWave::Uploader::Base
  include CarrierWave::RMagick

  version :with_mirror do
    process :resize_to_fill => [200, 200]
    process :add_mirror_effect => 0.2
  end

private

  def add_mirror_effect(mirror_length)
    manipulate! do |img|
      mirror_rows = img.rows * mirror_length

      gradient = Magick::GradientFill.new(0, 0, mirror_rows, 0, "#888", "#000")
      gradient = Magick::Image.new(img.columns, mirror_rows, gradient)
      gradient.matte = false

      flipped = img.flip
      flipped.matte = true
      flipped.composite!(gradient, 0, 0, Magick::CopyOpacityCompositeOp)

      new_frame = Magick::Image.new(img.columns, img.rows + mirror_rows)
      new_frame.composite!(img, 0, 0, Magick::OverCompositeOp)
      new_frame.composite!(flipped, 0, img.rows, Magick::OverCompositeOp)
    end
  end

end

For extra props, put the add_mirror_effect method in a module and include it in your Uploader.