Display multiple model results in your views in rails app - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm adding a new model to my equasion and I'm wondering if there is a way to associate two models into one model then display any/all results within a view. For example, here is what I've currently have;
#tweet_category.order("position").each do |tweet|
<%= tweet.title %>
end
just a short example... now what if I added facebook into this. I was first thinking of creating a model thats named stuff then associate it to tweet_category and facebook_category like so;
class Stuff < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :title
belongs_to :user
has_many :tweet_category
has_many :facebook_category
end
Now in my controller I'm guessing I would do the following;
class StuffController < ApplicationController
def index
#stuff_list = Stuff.find(:all)
end
end
and in my view I would just simply do the following from above view;
#stuff_list.order("position").each do |stuff|
<%= stuff.title %>
end
am I understanding the logic here??? would that work having two models / two tables db.. etc..

Answer 1

First of all, I don't understand why you would need that "stuff" model. It belongs to users and has_many tweet_category and facebook_category, and just does nothing but offering a "title", when your User model could do the job ( I mean, each user could have many tweets and fb category, instead of having one or several "stuff" which has/have many of them ).
Anyway, if you want to make links between your models and then display everything in a view, first in your User model you just have to do :
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
...
has_many :facebook_categories #( I don't know how rails would pluralize it, btw, I'm just making an assumption )
has_many :tweeter_categories
end
and
class Facebook_category
...
belongs_to :user
end
and do the same fot the tweeter category
Then in your controller :
def show_everything #Here it's a custom action, but you can call it wherever you want
#users = User.all
end
And finally in your view :
<% #users.each do |user| %>
<% user.facebook_categories.all.each do |fb_c| %>
<%= fb_c.title %>
<% end %>
<% user.tweeter_categories.all.each do |t_c| %>
<%= t_c.title %>
<% end %>
<% end %>
Maybe just try to grab a better name for your models, so the pluralization doesn't get messy ( and I saw that the ".all" method is deprecated, so maybe replace it with something
Hope it helps !
Edit :
Basically, when you're doing
#users = User.all
What rails' doing is putting every hash defining every "User" in an array. So, if you want to mix two tables' arrays inside a single array, you can do something like this :
#categories = [] << Facebook_category.all, Tweeter_category.all
You will then have an array ( #category ), filled with 2 arrays ( one ActiveRecord relation for Facebook_category and one for Tweeter_category ). Themselves filled with hashes of their model. So, what you need to do is :
#categories.flatten!
Here's the API for what flatten does ( basically removing all your nested arrays inside your first tarray )
Now, you got a single array of hashes, being the informations from both your model's instances. And, if these informations can be ordered, in your view, you just have to :
<% #categories.order("updated_at").each do |i| %>
<%= i.title %>
<% end %>