AfterCommit

AfterCommit is a term used to describe a lifecycle hook in some persistence frameworks that runs only after a surrounding database transaction has been successfully committed. The purpose is to perform actions that should occur only when data changes are durable, avoiding side effects if the transaction is rolled back. This timing distinction helps ensure data integrity for subsequent operations such as notifications, cache updates, or background job scheduling.

In the Ruby on Rails ecosystem, the equivalent concept appears as after_commit, a callback provided by ActiveRecord. It can be attached to a model and scoped to specific events, such as on: :create, on: :update, or on: :destroy, so the callback fires only after a successful commit of the corresponding operation. Rails also provides after_rollback for handling situations where a transaction does not commit. The after_commit callbacks run after the overall transaction commits, which may be different from the moment a single model instance is saved or updated within that transaction.

Common use cases for afterCommit include enqueuing background jobs, publishing domain events to message brokers, or updating external read models. By deferring these side effects until commit, systems reduce the risk of performing actions based on data that might later be rolled back.

Notes and caveats include the fact that afterCommit only fires when the transaction commits, not when it is rolled back. Not all frameworks use identical naming or scoping rules, so the exact syntax and behavior can vary. When designing with afterCommit, developers should consider transactional boundaries, nested transactions, and testing implications to ensure predictable delivery of side effects.