I'm trying to do a basic model association in rails.
Basically I have a List table which stores item_id and user_id.
One user can create multiple "list-items."
Is this the correct way to do it?
Thanks.
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :users, :through => :lists
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :items, :through => :lists
end
class List < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :item
end
Depending on what you want to reach, your solution is the right one (or not). I see the following cases:
You want to create an n:m association between items and users. So each item could be referenced by many users, and each user references many items. If this is the right context, then your solution is the right one. See the Rails Guides: Associations for more information on that.
An alternative for that situation could be to use the has_and_belongs_to_many Association. The situation is the same, but it does not make sense to talk about lists, there will be no model object for it.
If each users may have many lists, and each list may have many items, your solution would be wrong. This would be no n:m association with list as the join table in between, but two 1:n relations.
The code for the third example would look like that:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :items, :through => :lists
has_many :lists
end
class List < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :items
belongs_to :user
end
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :list
end
In the first solution, you should add the relations for users to lists and items to list:
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :lists
has_many :users, :through => :lists
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :lists
has_many :items, :through => :lists
end
If the "list" entity truly is a pure association/join, that is, it has no inherent attributes of its own, then you can simplify a bit and use has_and_belongs_to_many. Then you don't need a "List" class.
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :items
end
Rails will look for the references in a "items_users" table, so in your migration, you need to create it a la:
create_table :items_users, :id => false do |t|
t.references :users, :items
end
Many people will tell you to always use has_many :through, but others (like me) will disagree - use the right tool for job.
Related
I have a subscription application with Users, Orders and DeliverySchedules (and other models that make a has_many :through necessary instead of a has_many).
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders
has_many :deliveryschedules, :through => :orders
class Deliveryschedule < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :orders
has_many :users, :through => :orders
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :deliveryschedule
My question is, why does
#allusers.each do |t|
User.find_by_id(t.id).deliveryschedules.last.delivery_date
end
return something different from
#allusers.each do |t|
t.deliveryschedules.last.delivery_date
end
My app is working, but I feel like I'm missing something fundamental here I can't track down in the docs.
This is normal database behavior. The order of records that are returned from the database is undetermined, unless you specifically use ORDER BY. So it is possible that two different queries will return the rows in different order.
I have a model named Container. This model just has a list of associated Links. So I created tables containers, links and containers_links. Now I want to connect my two models. So I did
class Container < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :links, :through => :containers_links
end
class Links < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :containers, :through => :containers_links
end
But I have an error because I don't have reflection with containers_links in my model. I can add something like
has_many :containers_links
But I don't have a model ContainersLinks (and I don't want to create one). What should I do?
You can use has_and_belongs_to_many relationship
class Container < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :links
end
class Links < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :containers
end
But you still need to create join table.
I have a content model represented by class: content. Now users can rate content, review content or do both. I want to find all the content that a user have either rated, reviewed or rated and reviewed. The reviews table has a many-to-one association with the content table (meaning a content can be reviewed many times). A similar relationship exists between the ratings table and the content table.
I'm thinking I should do separate queries to find all rated content by a user, then all reviewed content by a user, then do a union. But I can't find out how to do a union that returns an active record relation. I need a relation because I want to paginate the results.
Thank you.
Ok, so first let's set up your models. From your explanation I'm thinking you'll want something like this:
class Content < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :reviewing_users, :through => :reviews, :class_name => "User"
has_many :ratings
has_many :rating_users, :through => :ratings, :class_name => "User"
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :reviewed_contents, :through => :reviews, :class_name => "Content"
has_many :ratings
has_many :rated_contents, :through => :ratings, :class_name => "Content"
end
class Review < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :content
belongs_to :user
end
class Rating < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :content
belongs_to :user
end
And then for a given user you can find all the content that they've reviewed and/or rated with:
( user.reviewed_contents + user.rated_contents ).uniq
(user.reviewed_contents + user.rated_contents).uniq returns an array, not a relation, so beware. You can test this by attempting to call a class method on #posts (other than paginate).
You can still paginate though. just use #posts.paginate, as the will_paginate gem adds a paginate method to the array class.
I guess i have a rather simple question since I'm new to Ruby and even newer to ActiveRecords.
What I want to achieve is a class representation with ActiveRecords (and the corresponding SQL schema) that models the following problem:
There exist categories and subcategories (modeled by parent_id)
Products belong to only one category
Each product can have 0..inf features
Features simply have some data fields and are only referenced by the products
My current schema is shown below in the picture:
Is this schema suitable for ActiveRecords? How would the classes look like? I simply cant figure out how the JoinTable fits into the ActiveRecord structure.
Further, how can i model the link from parent_id->categories.id?
Any help appreciated!
cheers
To model the relationships you described you would do:
models/category.rb
class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :products
has_many :subcategories, :class_name => "Category", :foreign_key => :parent_id
end
models/product.rb
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :product
has_many :features, :through => :product_features
has_many :product_features
end
models/feature.rb
class Feature < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :product_features
has_many :products, :through => :product_features
end
models/productfeature.rb
class ProductFeature < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :product
belongs_to :feature
end
Given this structure then you have the join modelled as a Many-to-Many relation. This is useful since the HABTM style of join is going away in Rails 3.1
To get the information, I often use the console rails console for testing and this would allow you do do
#category = Category.first #get the first category
#category.subcategories #returns an array of categories
The traversal of the links is via the relations that you setup in the models, with the intention that its readable, in the context of using sensible names. The self-joins, as per your question, is also covered in Rails Guides: Associations with a good example. The rest of this guide also details the other relationships.
One other thing to remember is to create your migrations so that the join table is created with the id's which are the foreign keys.
My models would look like this:
class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :products
end
class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :category
has_many :product_features
has_many :features, :through => :product_features
end
class ProductFeature < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :product
belongs_to :feature
end
class Feature < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :product_features
has_many :products, :through => :product_features
end
Rails has an association called has_and_belongs_to_many. Rails expects a table with two columns to store the join data. I usually use dual has_many to achieve the same results as it gives you flexibility to add additional information in the join table.
Sample code
product.category
product.category = category1
category.products
category.products << product1
product.features
product.features << feature1
feature.products
feature.products << product1
Here is the API for ActiveRecord::Associations::ClassMethods
There are a lot of examples in there of different relationships and how to construct them. It's worth taking the time to understand how/why you construct these associations.
For the Many-to-many join you will want to look at
has_many ..., :through => ...
has_and_belongs_to_many ...
The docs explain when and why to use each.
In Rails 3 with ActiveRecord, I have 2 models (Users and Tasks). These models are linked together with a has_many :through association on another model, Assignments. How can I find all Tasks that are NOT associated to a particular user?
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments
has_many :tasks, :through => :assignments
end
class Tasks < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :assignments
has_many :users, :through => :assignments
end
class Assignments < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :users
belongs_to :tasks
end
Short 'n sweet:
Task.all - user.tasks
Avoid loading user tasks:
Task.where('id not in (?)', user.task_ids)
I couldn't figure out how to do it with an outer join in AR.
I'm going to assume you want those tasks without any associated user, rather than not associated to a user in particular.
Tasks.joins('left outer join assignments on assignments.task_id = tasks.id').where('assignments.* is null')