Many to many table rails - ruby-on-rails

I'm trying to set up a many to many table using rails. I followed these instructions from the Rails Guides and believe I have the schema set up properly.
I would like to be able to see all reviews for a specific doctor.
models:
class Doctor < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :users, through: :reviews
end
class Review <ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :doctor
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :doctors, through: :reviews
end
I'm able to successfully query doctor.users, user.doctors, and user.reviews. However when I try to query doctor.reviews I only see an empty proxy #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy []>
How can I see all reviews for a doctor?

You need to change:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :doctors, through: :reviews
end
to:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :reviews
has_many :doctors, through: :reviews, source: :doctor
end
What is happening is that user is looking for "doctors" inside of Reviews, but you have no method to retrieve "doctors" only "doctor". If you specify the source attribute, it will name your query "doctors" but it will look under "doctor" which in this case is defined. Rails tries to guess what it should be, and usually assumes correctly, but being more explicit may solve the problem in this case.

Related

Retrieving all posts from a board that a user's subscribed to

I'm currently setting up a feed from scratch where a user subscribes to multiple message boards and would receive all of the posts created under that board. This is how I have my code written so far:
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_many :subscriptions, dependent: :destroy
has_many :boards, through: :subscriptions
end
class Subscription < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :board
end
class Board < ApplicationRecord
has_many :subscriptions, dependent: :destroy
has_many :subscribers, through: :subscriptions, source: :user
end
class Post < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :board
belongs_to :user
end
When it comes time to display the posts is where I'm having problems as far as the proper approach. Would the simple solution be to setup another HMT association in the user model as so?
has_many :subscribed_posts, through: :boards, source: :posts
One immediate flaw I see in my approach is that the user would get their posts to show up including those of other users. Would the better solution be to create some sort of SQL query?
Yes, you can build another association to retrieve posts you need, but as you mentioned that would return also the users' posts too, so you have to put some conditions to prevent such behavior.
has_many :subscribed_posts, through: :boards, source: :posts, conditions: {["user_id != ?", id] }

Many-to-many association with join table and multiple aliases

I'm working on a geocaching application where users can create a new cache or visit an existing one. Here are the models:
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_many :usercaches
has_many :visited_caches, source: :caches, through: :usercaches
has_many :created_caches, class_name: :caches
end
class Cache < ApplicationRecord
has_many :usercaches
has_many :visitors, source: :users, through: :usercaches
end
class Usercache < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :cache
end
The join table looks the way it does because I've been trying to eliminate any potential errors related to capitalization or pluralization. Whenever I create a User in Rails console and try to look at new_user.visited_caches, I get the following error:
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughSourceAssociationNotFoundError: Could not
find the source association(s) :caches in model Usercache. Try
'has_many :visited_caches, :through => :usercaches, :source =>
'. Is it one of user or cache?
When I rearrange the association as suggested, however, the error remains the same. Is there some small detail I'm missing, or am I working with a completely incorrect paradigm for what I want to accomplish?
source must be provided in a singular form (the documentation for has_many provides an example for it):
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_many :usercaches
has_many :visited_caches, source: :cache, through: :usercaches
has_many :created_caches, class_name: :caches
end
class Cache < ApplicationRecord
has_many :usercaches
has_many :visitors, source: :user, through: :usercaches
end
class Usercache < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :cache
end

Specifying Conditions on Multiple Nested Eager Loaded Associations

I'm trying to query on ActiveRecord multiple nested eager loaded associations with conditions like so:
user.books.includes(slot: [room: :school]).where("books.slot.room.school.id = 1")
Obviously this query is wrong, but basically what I'm trying to reach is a relation of user.books for a certain school.
My model structure is:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :books
has_many :slots, through: :books
has_many :rooms, through: :slots
has_many :schools
end
class Book < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :slot
end
class Slot < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :books
belongs_to :room
end
class Room < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :school
has_many :slots
end
class School < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :users
has_many :rooms
has_many :slots, through: :rooms
has_many :books, through: :slots
end
Any ideas? Thanks in advance.
includes eager loads association records, while joins does what you want to do.
This question has been asked here numerous times. Please make sure that you look and try to find a similar question here before you ask one.
So you want to change your code like this:
user.books.joins(slot: [room: :school]).where(schools: { id: 1 })

Is the first has_many redundant? - Ruby on Rails Active records associations

Rails 4.2 newbie:
2 Questions;
1) Is the first has_many redundant? Since its name is a plural of Save Class?
can I have only:
has_many :savers, through: :saves, source: :saver
Or even better;
has_many :savers, through: :saves
If the answer is yes, where can I set "dependent: :destroy"?
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
has_many :saves, class_name: "Save", foreign_key: "saver_id", dependent: :destroy
has_many :savers, through: :saves, source: :saver
end
class Save < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :saver, class_name: "User"
validates :saver_id, presence: true
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :posts, dependent: :destroy
...
end
2) This is the typical blog model, where user can 'save' posts posted by another user to their timeline. Does this model make use best practices? Specially in db performance, doing a Join to get posts saved by a User. The 'Save' table that will have 100MM rows?
Lets first alter your example a bit to make the naming less confusing:
class User
has_many :bookmarks
has_many :posts, through: :bookmarks
end
class Post
has_many :bookmarks
has_many :users, through: :bookmarks
end
class Bookmark
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :post
end
Lets have a look at the query generated when we do #user.posts
irb(main):009:0> #user.posts
Post Load (0.2ms) SELECT "posts".* FROM "posts" INNER JOIN "bookmarks" ON "posts"."id" = "bookmarks"."post_id" WHERE "bookmarks"."user_id" = ? [["user_id", 1]]
=> #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy []>
Now lets comment out has_many :bookmarks and reload:
class User
# has_many :bookmarks
has_many :posts, through: :bookmarks
end
irb(main):005:0> #user.posts
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughAssociationNotFoundError: Could not find the association :bookmarks in model User
So no, the first has_many is not redundant - in fact its the very core of how has_many through: works. You setup a shortcut of sorts through another relation.
Note in has_many :posts, through: :bookmarks :bookmarks is the name relation we are joining through. Not the table which contains the joins.
To fix your original code you would need to do:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :saves, dependent: :destroy
has_many :savers, through: :saves
end
class Save < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :saver, class_name: "User"
belongs_to :post # A join table with only one relation is pretty worthless.
validates :saver_id, presence: true
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :posts
has_many :saves, dependent: :destroy
has_many :posts, through: :saves
end
Note that you don't need half the junk - if you have has_many :savers, through: :saves ActiveRecord will look for the relation saver by itself. Also you only want to use dependent: destroy on the join model - not on the post relation as that would remove all the posts a user has "saved" - even those written by others!
Teaching Rails myself, I want to learn the professional way to use the framework and following Rails guidelines best practices. That's not easy, because I usually find answers that 'just works'
I'll try to answer myself and maybe it could be useful for Rails Newbies:
Using has_many through, association, Rails firstly infers the association by looking at the foreign key of the form <class>_id where <class> is the lowercase of the class name, in this example; 'save_id'.
So, if we have the column name 'save_id', we will have the following simplified model:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
has_many :saves, through: :saves
end
class Save < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :savers, class_name: "User"
validates :save_id, presence: true
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :posts, dependent: :destroy
...
end

How should I approach this relations in ruby?

I've been going back and forward on this and I would like some advices.
I have "User" that can be part of many "Organizations", and for each one they can have many "Roles". (actually I have this scenario repeated with other kind of users and with something like roles, but for the sake of the example I summed it up).
My initial approach was doing a Table with user_id, organization_id and role_id, but that would mean many registers with the same user_id and organization_id just to change the role_id.
So I thought of doing an organization_users relation table and an organization_users_roles relation. The thing is, now I don't exactly know how to code the models.
class Organization < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :users, join_table: :organization_users
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :organizations, join_table: :organization_users
end
class OrganizationUser < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
has_and_belongs_to_many :organizations
has_many :organization_user_roles
has_many :roles, through: :organization_user_roles
end
class OrganizationUserRole < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :roles
has_and_belongs_to_many :organization_users
end
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :organization_user_roles
end
If for example I want to get: ´OrganizationUser.first.roles´ I get an error saying: PG::UndefinedTable: ERROR: relation "organization_user_roles" does not exist
How should I fix my models?
You should use a much simpler approach. According to your description, Roles is actually what connects Users to Organizations and vice-versa.
Using the has_many and has_many :through associations, this can be implemented like the following:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :roles, inverse_of: :users, dependent: :destroy
has_many :organizations, inverse_of: :users, through: :roles
end
class Organization < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :roles, inverse_of: :organizations, dependent: :destroy
has_many :users, inverse_of: :organizations, through: :roles
end
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user, inverse_of: :roles
belongs_to :organization, inverse_of: :roles
end
If you wish to preserve roles when you destroy users or organizations, change the dependent: keys to :nullify. This might be a good idea if you add other descriptive data in your Role and want the role to remain even though temporarily vacated by a user, for example.
The has_many :through association reference:
http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html#the-has-many-through-association
To add to jaxx's answer (I upvoted), I originally thought you'd be best looking at has_many :through:
#app/models/user.rb
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :positions
has_many :organizations, through: :positions
end
#app/models/position.rb
class Position < ActiveRecord::Base
#columns id | user_id | organization_id | role_id | etc | created_at | updated_at
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :organization
belongs_to :role
delegate :name, to: :role #-> #position.name
end
#app/models/organization.rb
class Organization < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :positions
has_many :users, through: :positions
end
#app/models/role.rb
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :positions
end
This will allow you to call the following:
#organization = Organization.find x
#organization.positions
#organization.users
#user = User.find x
#user.organizations
#user.positions
This is much simpler than your approach, and therefore has much more ability to keep your system flexible & extensible.
If you want to scope your #organizations, you should be able to do so, and still call the users / positions you need.
One of the added benefits of the code above is that the Position model will give you an actual set of data which can be shared between organizations and users.
It resolves one of the main issues with jaxx's answer, which is that you have to set a role for every association you make. With my interpretation, your roles can be set on their own, and each position assigned the privileges each role provides.
If the user can have many Roles for a single organisation,
and OrganizationUser represents this membership,
than, yes, you need another table for organization_user_roles.
You need to explicitly create it in the database (normally with a migration)
To not get confused, try to find a nice name for OrganisationUser, like employment, membership, etc.

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