How to limit amount of associations in Elixir Ecto - database

Question

I have this app where there is a Games table and a Players table, and they share an n:n association.
This association is mapped in Phoenix through a GamesPlayers schema.
What I'm wondering how to do is actually quite simple: I'd like there to be an adjustable limit of how many players are allowed per game.
If you need more details, carry on reading, but if you already know an answer feel free to skip the rest!
What I've Tried
I've taken a look at adding check constraints, but without much success. Here's what the check constraint would have to look something like:
create constraint("games_players", :limit_players, check: "count(players) <= player_limit")
Problem here is, the check syntax is very much invalid and I don't think there actually is a valid way to achieve this using this call.
I've also looked into adding a trigger to the Postgres database directly in order to enforce this (something very similar to what this answer proposes), but I am very wary of directly fiddling with the DB since I should only be using ecto's interface.
Table Schemas
For the purposes of this question, let's assume this is what the tables look like:
Games
Property
Type
id
integer
player_limit
integer
Players
Property
Type
id
integer
GamesPlayers
Property
Type
game_id
references(Games)
player_id
references(Players)

Answer 1

As I mentioned in my comment, I think the cleanest way to enforce this is via business logic inside the code, not via a database constraint. I would approach this using a database transaction, which Ecto supports via Ecto.Repo.transaction/2. This will prevent any race conditions.
In this case I would do something like the following:
begin the transaction
perform a SELECT query counting the number of players in the given game; if the game is already full, abort the transaction, otherwise, continue
perform an INSERT query to add the player to the game
complete the transaction
In code, this would boil down to something like this (untested):
import Ecto.Query
alias MyApp.Repo
alias MyApp.GamesPlayers
#max_allowed_players 10
def add_player_to_game(player_id, game_id, opts \\ []) do
max_allowed_players = Keyword.get(opts, :max_allowed_players, #max_allowed_players)
case is_game_full?(game_id, max_allowed_players) do
false -> %GamesPlayers{
game_id: game_id,
player_id: player_id
}
|> Repo.insert!()
# Raising an error causes the transaction to fail
true -> raise "Game #{inspect(game_id)} full; cannot add player #{inspect(player_id)}"
end
end
defp is_game_full?(game_id, max_allowed_players) do
current_players = from(r in GamesPlayers,
where: r.game_id == game_id,
select: count(r.id)
)
|> Repo.one()
current_players >= max_allowed_players
end