alt Hacker NewsI agree that ActiveRecord isn't particularly opinionated about how to deal with updates to batches of records, but there are multiple ways of approaching this and AR won't get in your way.
upsert_all[1] is available to update a batch of records in a single write that does not invoke model callbacks.
activerecord-import[2] is also very nice gem that provides a great api for working with batches of records.
It can be as simple as extracting your callback logic and a method (def self.batch_update) and running your callback logic after the upsert.
[1] https://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Relation.ht... [2] https://github.com/zdennis/activerecord-import
By upsert_all not invoking model callbacks, it's admitting that the ActiveRecord approach doesn't scale.
"It can be as simple as extracting your callback..." Isn't this the kind of repetitive thing a framework should be doing on your behalf?
To be fair, ActiveRecord isn't a fault Rails invented. Apparently it's from one of Martin Fowler's many writings where each model instance manages its own storage. Even Fowler seems to say that the DataMapper approach is better to separate concerns in complex scenarios.