I have an Update model which belongs to users.
To show all of one user's friends' Updates, I am doing something like:
Update.where("user_id" => [array_of_friend_ids])
I know the "right" way of doing things is to create a method to create the above array. I started writing the method but it's only half-working. Currently I have this in my user model:
def self.findfriends(id)
#friendarray = []
#registered_friends = Friend.where("user_id" => id)
#registered_friends.each do |x|
#friendarray << x.friend_id
end
return #friendarray
end
I am doing the entire action in the view with:
<% #friendinsert = User.findfriends(current_user.id) %>
<% #friendarray = [] %>
<% #friendarray << #friendinsert %>
<%= #friendarray.flatten! %>
Then I'm calling Update.where("user_id" => #friendarray) which works. But obviously I'm doing things in a very hacky way here. I'm a bit confused as to when Rails can "see" certain variables from models and methods in the view. What's the best way to go about inserting an array of IDs to find their Updates, since I'm not supposed to use much logic in the view itself?
Mattharick is right about using associations. You should use associations for the question you mentioned in description of your question. If we come to the question at the title of your question;
let's say you have a User model.
These two methods are different:
def self.testing
puts "I'm testing"
end
and the other one is:
def testing
puts "I'm testing"
end
Pay attention to the self keyword. self keyword makes method a Class method. Which you can call it from your controllers or views like: User.testing.
But the one with out testing is a instance method. Which can be called like:
u = User.last
u.testing
Second one gives you possibility to use attributes of the 'instance' inside your model.
For example, you can show name of your instance in that method just like this?
def testing
puts "Look, I'm showing this instance's name which is: #{name}"
end
These are powerful stuff.
Practise on them.
Simple add another association to your project.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :friendship
has_many :friends, :through => :friendship, :class_name => User, :foreign_key => :friend_id
has_many :friendship
has_many :users, :through => :friendship
end
class Friendship < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :friend, :class_name => User
end
I don't know if my synrax is correct, please try out.
Friendship has the attributes user_id and friend_id.
After that you should be able to do something like following to get the updates of a friend:
User.last.friends.last.updates
You can work with normal active record queries instead of hacky arrays..
Related
I made a real basic github project here that demonstrates the issue. Basically, when I create a new comment, it is saved as expected; when I update an existing comment, it isn't saved. However, that isn't what the docs for :autosave => true say ... they say the opposite. Here's the code:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :comments,
:autosave => true,
:inverse_of => :post,
:dependent => :destroy
def comment=(val)
obj=comments.find_or_initialize_by(:posted_at=>Date.today)
obj.text=val
end
end
class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :post, :inverse_of=>:comments
end
Now in the console, I test:
p=Post.create(:name=>'How to groom your unicorn')
p.comment="That's cool!"
p.save!
p.comments # returns value as expected. Now we try the update case ...
p.comment="But how to you polish the rainbow?"
p.save!
p.comments # oops ... it wasn't updated
Why not? What am I missing?
Note if you don't use "find_or_initialize", it works as ActiveRecord respects the association cache - otherwise it reloads the comments too often, throwing out the change. ie, this implementation works
def comment=(val)
obj=comments.detect {|obj| obj.posted_at==Date.today}
obj = comments.build(:posted_at=>Date.today) if(obj.nil?)
obj.text=val
end
But of course, I don't want to walk through the collection in memory if I could just do it with the database. Plus, it seems inconsistent that it works with new object but not an existing object.
Here is another option. You can explicitly add the record returned by find_or_initialize_by to the collection if it is not a new record.
def comment=(val)
obj=comments.find_or_initialize_by(:posted_at=>Date.today)
unless obj.new_record?
association(:comments).add_to_target(obj)
end
obj.text=val
end
I don't think you can make this work. When you use find_or_initialize_by it looks like the collection is not used - just the scoping. So you are getting back a different object.
If you change your method:
def comment=(val)
obj = comments.find_or_initialize_by(:posted_at => Date.today)
obj.text = val
puts "obj.object_id: #{obj.object_id} (#{obj.text})"
puts "comments[0].object_id: #{comments[0].object_id} (#{comments[0].text})"
obj.text
end
You'll see this:
p.comment="But how to you polish the rainbow?"
obj.object_id: 70287116773300 (But how to you polish the rainbow?)
comments[0].object_id: 70287100595240 (That's cool!)
So the comment from find_or_initialize_by is not in the collection, it outside of it. If you want this to work, I think you need to use detect and build as you have in the question:
def comment=(val)
obj = comments.detect {|c| c.posted_at == Date.today } || comments.build(:posted_at => Date.today)
obj.text = val
end
John Naegle is right. But you can still do what you want without using detect. Since you are updating only today's comment you can order the association by posted_date and simply access the first member of the comments collection to updated it. Rails will autosave for you from there:
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :comments, ->{order "posted_at DESC"}, :autosave=>true, :inverse_of=>:post,:dependent=>:destroy
def comment=(val)
if comments.empty? || comments[0].posted_at != Date.today
comments.build(:posted_at=>Date.today, :text => val)
else
comments[0].text=val
end
end
end
I'm kinda new to the whole rails/ruby thing. I've built a restful API for an invoicing app. Summary of models is below.
class Invoice < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :pages
end
class Page < ActiveRecord::Base
belogs_to :invoice
has_many :rows
end
class Row < ActiveRecord::Base
belogs_to :page
end
I would like to be able to include related models in one rest call. I can currently do one level of nesting. For example i can get an Invoice with all its pages /invoices?with=pages is the call i would make. In controller i would create a hash array from this as per below(probably not the best code you've seen):
def with_params_hash
if(params[:with])
withs = params[:with].split(',')
withs.map! do |with|
with.parameterize.underscore.to_sym
end
withs
else
nil
end
end
This will return a hash as array e.g [:pages]
In the controller i use it as
#response = #invoice.to_json(:include => with_params_hash)
This works fine. I would like to be able to include nested models of say page.
As you know this can be done this way:
#invoice.to_json(:include => [:page => {:rows}])
The first question i guess is how do i represent this in the URL? I was thinking: /invoices?with=pages>rows. Assuming thats how I decide to do it. How do i then convert with=pages>rows into [:pages => {:rows}]
Why don't you use jbuilder? Will be easiest and you will can nest all models you want.
https://github.com/rails/jbuilder
So i ended up going with the format below for url:
/invoices?with=pages>rows
The function below will generate the function required:
def with_params_hash
final_arr = []
with_array = params[:with].split(',')
with_array.each do |withstring|
if withstring.include? ">"
parent = withstring[0..(withstring.index('>')-1)].parameterize.underscore.to_sym
sub = withstring[(withstring.index('>')+1)..withstring.length].parameterize.underscore.to_sym
final_arr << {parent => {:include => sub}}
else
final_arr << withstring.parameterize.underscore.to_sym
end
end
final_arr
end
Usage in the controller looks like:
#invoice.all.to_json(:include => with_params)
Alternatively as per #DavidGuerra's idea https://github.com/rails/jbuilder is not a bad option.
Say I have two classes,
Image and Credit
class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :credit
accepts_nested_attributes_for :credit
end
class Credit < ActiveRecord::Base
#has a field called name
has_many :images
end
I want associate a Credit when Image is created, acting a bit like a tag. Essentially, I want behavior like Credit.find_or_create_by_name, but in the client code using Credit, it would be much cleaner if it was just a Create. I can't seem to figure out a way to bake this into the model.
Try this:
class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :credit
attr_accessor :credit_name
after_create { Credit.associate_object(self) }
end
class Credit < ActiveRecord::Base
#has a field called name
has_many :images
def self.associate_object(object, association='images')
credit = self.find_or_create_by_name(object.credit_name)
credit.send(association) << object
credit.save
end
end
Then when you create an image what you can do is something like
Image.create(:attr1 => 'value1', :attr2 => 'value2', ..., :credit_name => 'some_name')
And it will take the name that you feed into the :credit_name value and use it in the after_create callback.
Note that if you decided to have a different object associated with Credit later on (let's say a class called Text), you could do still use this method like so:
class Text < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :credit
attr_accessor :credit_name
before_create { Credit.associate_object(self, 'texts') }
end
Although at that point you probably would want to consider making a SuperClass for all of the classes that belong_to credit, and just having the superclass handle the association. You might also want to look at polymorphic relationships.
This is probably more trouble than it's worth, and is dangerous because it involves overriding the Credit class's initialize method, but I think this might work. My advice to you would be to try the solution I suggested before and ditch those gems or modify them so they can use your method. That being said, here goes nothing:
First you need a way to get at the method caller for the Credit initializer. Let's use a class I found on the web called CallChain, but we'll modify it for our purposes. You would probably want to put this in your lib folder.
class CallChain
require 'active_support'
def self.caller_class
caller_file.split('/').last.chomp('.rb').classify.constantize
end
def self.caller_file(depth=1)
parse_caller(caller(depth+1).first).first
end
private
#Stolen from ActionMailer, where this was used but was not made reusable
def self.parse_caller(at)
if /^(.+?):(\d+)(?::in `(.*)')?/ =~ at
file = Regexp.last_match[1]
line = Regexp.last_match[2].to_i
method = Regexp.last_match[3]
[file, line, method]
end
end
end
Now we need to overwrite the Credit classes initializer because when you make a call to Credit.new or Credit.create from another class (in this case your Image class), it is calling the initializer from that class. You also need to ensure that when you make a call to Credit.create or Credit.new that you feed in :caller_class_id => self.id to the attributes argument since we can't get at it from the initializer.
class Credit < ActiveRecord::Base
#has a field called name
has_many :images
attr_accessor :caller_class_id
def initialize(args = {})
super
# only screw around with this stuff if the caller_class_id has been set
if caller_class_id
caller_class = CallChain.caller_class
self.send(caller_class.to_param.tableize) << caller_class.find(caller_class_id)
end
end
end
Now that we have that setup, we can make a simple method in our Image class which will create a new Credit and setup the association properly like so:
class Image < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :credit
accepts_nested_attributes_for :credit
# for building
def build_credit
Credit.new(:attr1 => 'val1', etc.., :caller_class_id => self.id)
end
# for creating
# if you wanted to have this happen automatically you could make the method get called by an 'after_create' callback on this class.
def create_credit
Credit.create(:attr1 => 'val1', etc.., :caller_class_id => self.id)
end
end
Again, I really wouldn't recommend this, but I wanted to see if it was possible. Give it a try if you don't mind overriding the initialize method on Credit, I believe it's a solution that fits all your criteria.
I'm having some issues in RoR with some model methods I am setting. I'm trying to build a method on one model, with an argument that gets supplied a default value (nil). The ideal is that if a value is passed to the method, it will do something other than the default behavior. Here is the setup:
I currently have four models: Market, Deal, Merchant, and BusinessType
Associations look like this:
class Deal
belongs_to :market
belongs_to :merchant
end
class Market
has_many :deals
has_many :merchants
end
class Merchant
has_many :deals
belongs_to :market
belongs_to :business_type
end
class BusinessType
has_many :merchants
has_many :deals, :through => :merchants
end
I am trying to pull some data based on Business Type (I have greatly simplified the return, for the sake of brevity):
class BusinessType
def revenue(market=nil)
if market.nil?
return self.deals.sum('price')
else
return self.deals(:conditions => ['market_id = ?',market]).sum('price')
end
end
end
So, if I do something like:
puts BusinessType.first.revenue
I get the expected result, that is the sum of the price of all deals associated with that business type. However, when I do this:
puts BusinessType.first.revenue(1)
It still returns the sum price of all deals, NOT the sum price of all deals from market 1. I've also tried:
puts BusinessType.first.revenue(market=1)
Also with no luck.
What am I missing?
Thanks!
Try this:
class BusinessType
def revenue(market=nil)
if market.nil?
return self.deals.all.sum(&:price)
else
return self.deals.find(:all, :conditions => ['market_id = ?',market]).sum(&:price)
end
end
end
That should work for you, or at least it did for some basic testing I did first.
As I have gathered, this is because the sum method being called is on enumerable, not the sum method from ActiveRecord as you might have expected.
Note:
I just looked a bit further, and noticed you can still use your old code with a smaller tweak than the one I noted:
class BusinessType
def revenue(market=nil)
if market.nil?
return self.deals.sum('price')
else
return self.deals.sum('price', :conditions => ['market_id = ?', market])
end
end
end
Try this!
class BusinessType
def revenue(market=nil)
if market.nil?
return self.deals.sum(:price)
else
return self.deals.sum(:price,:conditions => ['market_id = ?',market])
end
end
end
You can refer this link for other functions. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Ruby_on_Rails/ActiveRecord/Calculations
So let's say you have
line_items
and line_items belong to a make and a model
a make has many models and line items
a model belongs to a make
For the bare example idea LineItem.new(:make => "Apple", :model => "Mac Book Pro")
When creating a LinteItem you want a text_field box for a make and a model. Makes and models shouldn't exist more than once.
So I used the following implementation:
before_save :find_or_create_make, :if => Proc.new {|line_item| line_item.make_title.present? }
before_save :find_or_create_model
def find_or_create_make
make = Make.find_or_create_by_title(self.make_title)
self.make = make
end
def find_or_create_model
model = Model.find_or_create_by_title(self.model_title) {|u| u.make = self.make}
self.model = model
end
However using this method means I have to run custom validations instead of a #validates_presence_of :make due to the associations happening off a virtual attribute
validate :require_make_or_make_title, :require_model_or_model_title
def require_make_or_make_title
errors.add_to_base("Must enter a make") unless (self.make || self.make_title)
end
def require_model_or_model_title
errors.add_to_base("Must enter a model") unless (self.model || self.model_title)
end
Meh, this is starting to suck. Now where it really sucks is editing with forms. Considering my form fields are a partial, my edit is rendering the same form as new. This means that :make_title and :model_title are blank on the form.
I'm not really sure what the best way to rectify the immediately above problem is, which was the final turning point on me thinking this needs to be refactored entirely.
If anyone can provide any feedback that would be great.
Thanks!
I don't think line_items should belong to a make, they should only belong to a model. And a model should have many line items. A make could have many line items through a model. You are missing a couple of methods to have your fields appear.
class LineItem
belongs_to :model
after_save :connect_model_and_make
def model_title
self.model.title
end
def model_title=(value)
self.model = Model.find_or_create_by_title(value)
end
def make_title
self.model.make.title
end
def make_title=(value)
#make = Make.find_or_create_by_title(value)
end
def connect_model_and_make
self.model.make = #make
end
end
class Model
has_many :line_items
belongs_to :make
end
class Make
has_many :models
has_many :line_items, :through => :models
end
It's really not that bad, there's just not super easy way to do it. I hope you put an autocomplete on those text fields at some point.