I am totally confused about how I should go about "the rails way" of effectively using my associations.
Here is an example model configuration from a Rails 4 app:
class Film < ActiveRecord::Base
# A movie, documentary, animated short, etc
has_many :roleships
has_many :participants, :through => :roleships
has_many :roles, :through => :roleships
# has_many :writers........ ?
end
class Participant < ActiveRecord::Base
# A human involved in making a movie
has_many :roleships
end
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
# A person's role in a film. i.e. "Writer", "Actor", "Extra" etc
has_many :roleships
end
class Roleship < ActiveRecord::Base
# The join for connecting different people
# to the different roles they have had in
# different films
belongs_to :participant
belongs_to :film
belongs_to :role
end
Given the above model configuration, the code I wish I had would allow me to add writers directly to a film and in the end have the join setup correctly.
So for example, I'd love to be able to do something like this:
## The Code I WISH I Had
Film.create!(name: "Some film", writers: [Participant.first])
I'm not sure if I'm going about thinking about this totally wrong but it seems impossible. What is the right way to accomplish this? Nested resources? A custom setter + scope? Something else? Virtual attributes? thank you!
I created a sample app based on your question.
https://github.com/szines/hodor_filmdb
I think useful to setup in Participant and in Role model a through association as well, but without this will work. It depends how would you like to use later this database. Without through this query wouldn't work: Participant.find(1).films
class Participant < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :roleships
has_many :films, through: :roleships
end
class Role < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :roleships
has_many :films, through: :roleships
end
Don't forget to give permit for extra fields (strong_parameters) in your films_controller.rb
def film_params
params.require(:film).permit(:title, :participant_ids, :role_ids)
end
What is strange, that if you create a new film with a participant and a role, two records will be created in the join table.
Update:
You can create a kind of virtual attribute in your model. For example:
def writers=(participant)
#writer_role = Role.find(1)
self.roles << #writer_role
self.participants << participant
end
and you can use: Film.create(title: 'The Movie', writers: [Participant.first])
If you had a normal has_and_belongs_to_many relationship i.e. beween a film and a participant, then you can create a film together with your examples.
As your joining model is more complex, you have to build the roleships separately:
writer= Roleship.create(
participant: Participant.find_by_name('Spielberg'),
role: Role.find_by_name('Director')
)
main_actor= Roleship.create(
participant: Participant.find_by_name('Willis'),
role: Role.find_by_name('Actor')
)
Film.create!(name: "Some film", roleships: [writer, main_actor])
for that, all attributes you use to build roleships and films must be mass assignable, so in a Rails 3.2 you would have to write:
class Roleship < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :participant, :role
...
end
class Film < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :name, :roleships
...
end
If you want to user roleship_ids, you have to write
class Film < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :name, :roleship_ids
...
end
Addendum:
Of cause you could write a setter method
class Film ...
def writers=(part_ids)
writer_role=Role.find_by_name('Writer')
# skiped code to delete existing writers
part_ids.each do |part_id|
self.roleships << Roleship.new(role: writer_role, participant_id: part_id)
end
end
end
but that makes your code depending on the data in your DB (contents of table roles) which is a bad idea.
Related
Lets say I have two models: Performance and Band, and to connect the two I have a join table called performers. My ActiveRecord models are setup as follows:
class Band < ApplicationRecord
has_many :performers
has_many :performances, through: :performers, dependent: :destroy
end
class Performance < ApplicationRecord
has_many :performers
has_many :bands, through: :performers, dependent: :destroy
end
class Performer < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :band
belongs_to :performance
end
Now the tricky part. I have a custom attribute called permissions in the performers table that captures the permission levels (owner, editor, viewer) for a performer, which defines who can make changes to a performance. Which brings me to my question: when a band creates a new performance, how can I set a value on the join table during creation e.g.
def create
performance = Performance.new(performance_params)
# here I add a performance to a band's performances, which creates a new performer record
band.performances << performance
# what I would also like to do (at the same time if possible) is also define the permission level
# during creation something like but:
performer = band.performers.last
performer.permissions = 'owner'
performer.save
render json: serialize(performance), status: 200
end
Is there something in Rails that can let me modify a join tables attribute during creation of an association?
EDIT
For reference, right now I do:
def create
performance = Performance.new(performance_params)
performer = Performer.new
performer.band = Band.find(params[:band_id])
performer.permissions = 'owner'
performance.performers << performer
performance.save!
render json: serialize(performance), status: 200
end
But was wondering if there was something simpler.
You can use either Association Callbacks on has_many or add appropriate callback to Performer model as it's still created as a model even it's joining one.
Something like:
class Performer < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :band
belongs_to :performance
before_create :set_permissions
private
def set_permissions
self.permissions = 'owner'
end
end
I have a number of associated tables in an application
class Listing < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :house
belongs_to :multiple_listing_service
end
class House < ActiveRecord::Base
has_one :zip_code
has_one :primary_mls, through: :zip_code
end
I wanted to create a scope that produces all the Listings that are related to the Primary MLS for the associated House. Put another way, the scope should produce all the Listings where the multiple_listing_service_id = primary_mls.id for the associated house.
I've tried dozens of nested joins scopes, and none seem to work. At best they just return all the Listings, and normally they fail out.
Any ideas?
If I understand correctly, I'm not sure a pure scope would be the way to go. Assuming you have:
class MultipleListingService < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :listings
has_many :zip_codes
end
I would go for something like:
class House < ActiveRecord::Base
...
def associated_listings
primary_mls.listings
end
end
Update 1
If your goal is to just get the primary listing then I would add an is_primary field to the Listing. This would be the most efficient. The alternative is a 3 table join which can work but is hard to optimize well:
class Listing < ActiveRecord::Base
...
scope :primary, -> { joins(:houses => [:zip_codes])
.where('zip_codes.multiple_listing_service_id = listings.multiple_listing_service_id') }
I have an Order which has many line_items. Only this is not a LineItem module, but a list of "things that act Orderable". E.g. Addon or Site.
class Order
attr_accessor :line_items
before_save :persist_line_items
private
def persist_line_items
#line_items.each {|li| li.save }
end
end
class Addon
belongs_to: order
end
class Site
belongs_to: order
end
Which can be used as:
order = Order.new
order.line_items << Addon.new(order: order)
order.line_items << Site.new(order: order)
But, now I want to load an Order and join the "associated" line_items. I
could load them in an after_initialize hook, and do an
Addon.find_by(order_id: self.id) but that quickly leads to a lot of
queries; where a JOIN would be more appropriate. In addition, I
currently miss the validations trickling up: when a normal has_many
related item is invalid the containing model will not be valid either:
order = Order.new(line_items: [an_invalid_line_item])
order.valid? #=> false
I am wondering if there is a way
to leverage ActiveRecords' has_many-relation to be used with a list of
different models.
I think that a polymorphic association should do the trick.
Would look like this:
class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :line_items
end
class LineItem < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :orderable, polymorphic: true
end
class Site < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :line_items, as: :orderable
end
class Addon < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :line_items, as: :orderable
end
It would use a join table, but i think this is actually a good thing. Otherwise you could use STI for your Addon and Site models, but that would not make a lot of sense in my regard.
I am having models like
// Contains the details of Parties (Users)
class Party < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :party_races
has_many :races, :through=>:party_races
end
// Contains the party_id and race_id mappings
class PartyRace < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :party
belongs_to :race
end
// Contains list of races like Asian,American,etc..
class Race < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :party_races
has_many :parties, :through => :party_races
end
Now, lets say I'm creating an instance of Party
party_instance = Party.new
How am I supposed to add multiple Races to party_instance and save to database ?
You could use nested attributes to make one form that allows children. There are many examples on this site. Read up on the following first:
Accepts nested attributes
Fields for
A railscast about your use case
You also can create new PartyRace for each Races that you can add:
def addRace( party_instance, new_race )
party_race = PartyRace.new( party: party_instance, race: new_race )
party_race.save
end
I want to create a random pack of 15 cards which should be invoked in the cardpacks_controller on create. I have the following models:
Card:
class Card < ActiveRecord::Base
# relations
has_many :cardpacks, through: :cardpackcards
belongs_to :cardset
end
Cardpack:
class Cardpack < ActiveRecord::Base
#relations
has_many :cards, through: :cardpackcards
belongs_to :cardset
# accept attributes
accepts_nested_attributes_for :cards
end
Cardpackcards:
class Cardpackcard < ActiveRecord::Base
#relations
belongs_to :card
belongs_to :cardpack
end
Cardsets:
class Cardset < ActiveRecord::Base
#relations
has_many :cards
has_many :cardsets
end
How can I create 15 Cardpackcards records with random card_id values and with the same cardpack_id (so they belong to the same pack)
I have watched the complex form series tutorial but it gives me no comprehension as how to tackle this problem.
I hope anyone can help me solve this problem and give me more insight in the rails language.
Thanks,
Erik
Depending on the database system you might be able to use an order random clause to find 15 random records. For example, in Postgres:
Model.order("RANDOM()").limit(15)
Given the random models, you can add a before_create method that will setup the associations.
If the Cardpackcard model doesn't do anything but provide a matching between cards and cardpacks, you could use a has_and_belongs_to_many association instead, which would simplify things a bit.
Without it, the controller code might look something like this:
cardset = Cardset.find(params[:cardset_id])
cardpack = Cardpack.create(:cardset => cardset)
15.times do
cardpack.cardpackcards.create(:card => Card.create(:cardset => cardset))
end