Associations in Rails 3 - ruby-on-rails-3

Question

I have an app which allows users to add recipes and then select their favourite recipes to view in their member area, I can select a favourite and i am getting the user_id, recipe_id and giving it a favourite_id.
What I would like to do is output the actual recipe to my view (as a favourite), like dish name, country_of_origin etc. I can do this with an actual recipe but not the favourite.Do i need to use has_many_through for this?
My models look like this
User
has_many :recipes
has_many :favourites
recipe
belongs_to :user
has_many :ingredients
has_many :preperations
has_many :favourites
favourites
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :recipe
attr_accessible :user_id, :recipe_id
My controller
#favourites = current_user.favourites
my link_to post
<%= link_to "Add to favorites", {:controller => 'favourites', :action => 'create', :recipe_id => r.id}, {:method => :post } %>
i can list the current users recipes, this is my contoller for this
#recipes = current_user.recipes if current_user.recipes
and then output them to the view like so
<% #recipes.each do |r| %>
<tr>
<td><%= r.dish_name %></td>
<td><%= r.country_of_origin %></td>
<td><%= r.difficulty %></td>
<td><%= r.preperation_time %></td>
<td><%= ingredient_names(r.ingredients) %></td>
<td><%= preperation_steps(r.preperations) %></td>
<td><%= image_tag r.avatar.url(:thumb)%></td>
<tr>
So if i do this in the view
<li><%= #favourites %></li>
I get this outputted
<Favourite id: 16, user_id: 8, recipe_id: 21, created_at: "2012-11-07 20:24:39", updated_at: "2012-11-07 20:24:39">]
If i try
<%= #favourites.dish_name %>
then i get the error undefined method dish_name
How do i get the params of the recipe model to show in the view. I do apologise just cant work it out, which should be really easy i guess?
Any help appreciated

Answer 1

You get undefined dish_name because your Favourite model does not have such attribute.
#favourites = current_user.favourites returns an array of Favourite objects.
In your view you would do something like
<% #favourites.each do |f| %>
<%= f.recipe %>
<% end %>
That will display all the recipes your current_user favorites. You could narrow it down to display a specific recipe or what not.

Answer 2

The favorites is just holding the relationship.
You can access the recipe by
#favourites.recipe
which will then be a recipe object and contain your attributes like dish_name etc.

Answer 3

#favourites is an array, yes? Then you must loop through #favourites and work with each element individually as so:
<% #favourites.each do |favorite| %>
<%= favorite.recipe.dish_name %>
<% end %>