Fix ActiveRecord::Relation#unscope

I'm pretty confused about the addition of this method. The documentation
says that it was intended to allow the removal of values from the
default scope (in contrast to #except). However it behaves exactly the
same as except: https://gist.github.com/jonleighton/7537008 (other than
having a slightly enhanced syntax).

The removal of the default scope is allowed by
94924dc32baf78f13e289172534c2e71c9c8cade, which was not a change we
could make until 4.1 due to the need to deprecate things. However after
that change #unscope still gives us nothing that #except doesn't already
give us.

However there *is* a desire to be able to unscope stuff in a way that
persists across merges, which would allow associations to be defined
which unscope stuff from the default scope of the associated model. E.g.

  has_many :comments, -> { unscope where: :trashed }

So that's what this change implements. I've also corrected the
documentation. I removed the guide references to #except as I think
unscope really supercedes #except now.

While we're here, there's also a potential desire to be able to write
this:

  has_many :comments, -> { unscoped }

However, it doesn't make sense and would not be straightforward to
implement. While with #unscope we're specifying exactly what we want to
be removed from the relation, with "unscoped" we're just saying that we
want it to not have some things which were added earlier on by the
default scope. However in the case of an association, we surely don't
want *all* conditions to be removed, otherwise the above would just
become "SELECT * FROM comments" with no foreign key constraint.

To make the above work, we'd have to somehow tag the relation values
which get added when evaluating the default scope in order to
differentiate them from other relation values. Which is way too much
complexity and therefore not worth it when most use cases can be
satisfied with unscope.

Closes #10643, #11061.

1 files changed, 12 insertions, 5 deletions

diff --git a/activerecord/lib/active_record/relation/query_methods.rb b/activerecord/lib/active_record/relation/query_methods.rb
index b6a7c25b4b..473762011b 100644
--- a/activerecord/lib/active_record/relation/query_methods.rb
+++ b/activerecord/lib/active_record/relation/query_methods.rb
@@ -341,13 +341,19 @@ module ActiveRecord
     #   User.where(name: "John", active: true).unscope(where: :name)
     #       == User.where(active: true)
     #
-    # Note that this method is more generalized than ActiveRecord::SpawnMethods#except
-    # because #except will only affect a particular relation's values. It won't wipe
-    # the order, grouping, etc. when that relation is merged. For example:
+    # This method is similar to <tt>except</tt>, but unlike
+    # <tt>except</tt>, it persists across merges:
     #
-    #   Post.comments.except(:order)
+    #   User.order('email').merge(User.except(:order))
+    #       == User.order('email')
+    #
+    #   User.order('email').merge(User.unscope(:order))
+    #       == User.all
+    #
+    # This means it can be used in association definitions:
+    #
+    #   has_many :comments, -> { unscope where: :trashed }
     #
-    # will still have an order if it comes from the default_scope on Comment.
     def unscope(*args)
       check_if_method_has_arguments!(:unscope, args)
       spawn.unscope!(*args)
@@ -355,6 +361,7 @@ module ActiveRecord
 
     def unscope!(*args) # :nodoc:
       args.flatten!
+      self.unscope_values += args
 
       args.each do |scope|
         case scope