Ruby show associated asset data in table - ruby-on-rails

Question

I'm new to RoR, so please be gentile. I'm not sure, if I search for the right topic. However, I've spent the whole day trying to figure out, how to work with the has_man, belongs_to and so forth asset associations.
Right now I have two assets:
sqlite> pragma table_info(meetups);
0|id|INTEGER|1||1
1|name|varchar(255)|0||0
2|owner|integer|0||0
3|dateOfInception|datetime|0||0
4|homeTown|varchar(255)|0||0
5|created_at|datetime|0||0
6|updated_at|datetime|0||0
7|activity_id|integer|0||0
sqlite> pragma table_info(activities);
0|id|INTEGER|1||1
1|name|varchar(255)|0||0
2|location|varchar(255)|0||0
3|startDate|datetime|0||0
4|duration|integer|0||0
5|description|varchar(255)|0||0
6|created_at|datetime|0||0
7|updated_at|datetime|0||0
8|image|varchar(255)|0||0
9|meetup_id|integer|0||0
So I can create a new meetup and select multiple saved activities. For every meetup we can select a multiple activities. If I create a meetup, they corresponding activities are also stored correctly, as you can see in the image below:
Image
However, it's not useful to output them just like an array. It would be great, if the activity name would appear. But how is that possible? I tried so many things, renaming the db foreign keys, create a find method in the meetup controller... but nothing worked. Please help me out here - I think I'm very near but someting I dont know doesnt work.
<% #meetups.each do |meetup| %>
<tr>
<td><%= meetup.name %></td>
<td><%= meetup.owner %></td>
<td><%= meetup.dateOfInception %></td>
<td><%= meetup.homeTown %></td>
<td><%= meetup.activity_ids %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Show', meetup %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Edit', edit_meetup_path(meetup) %></td>
<td><%= link_to 'Destroy', meetup, method: :delete, data: { confirm: 'Are you sure?' } %></td>
</tr>
<% end %>
class MeetupsController < ApplicationController
before_action :set_meetup, only: [:show, :edit, :update, :destroy]
# GET /meetups
# GET /meetups.json
def index
#meetups = Meetup.all
end
Many thanks for your help!

Answer 1

Try this in your view:
meetup.activities.map(&:name).join(',')
That should show the data you want. For performance reasons, you'll want to add .include(:activities) to
the controller action that loads your list of meetups.
It sounds like you're trying to model a Has And Belongs To Many relationship, though? You'll need a third table to model that correctly.
If that's not what you're wanting to model, you should remove the activity_id column from the meetups table.