How to associate existing model with new model in Rails - ruby-on-rails

I have a 'tip' model and a 'team' model. I am trying to create a form where a user will select the winning teams from several games. So far the user can select the winning teams and those id's are being saved as foriegn keys in the Tip model (team_id). But after saving, I can't go (for example ) #tip.team.name . What do I need to do ? How do I associate it (I though rails might magically do it if foriegn key is set), I am very new to rails. Thanks for any help !
class Tip < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :user_id, :team_id, :team, :game_id, :game, :comp, :comp_id
belongs_to :game
belongs_to :comp
belongs_to :team
end
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :name
has_many :tips
end
def create
params['game'][0].each do |key, value|
#tip = Tip.new
#tip.team_id = value
#tip.game_id = key
#tip.save
end
This last method may be messy too, but not sure how else to do it. There are several 'tips' that I want to create in the one form.
EDIT : To be clear I am quite sure it's a one to many relationship, I am creating several tips in the one form but each tip only relates to one team.
EDIT : Actually my approach (which I'm sure is not close to the best way, did allow tip.team.name. It was a silly error relating to my test data that made me think otherwise.

What you really need is to use a has_many through relation to link the tips and the teams. This is because one tip can have many teams, but also one team can be on many tips. You will need to create a third table to do this, maybe named TeamsTips. Here is how you might set it up:
class Tip < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :teams_tip
has_many :teams, :through => :teams_tip
end
class TeamsTip < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to: teams
belongs_to: tips
end
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :teams_tip
has_many :tips, :through => :teams_tip
end
Now when you have a #tip, you can find all the teams for it with #tip.teams. Remember, this will be an array so to get the first team use #tip.teams[0]. Likewise, if you have an #team, you can get all the tips for it with #team.tips.
For more informations on how to setup this has_many through association, see A Guide to Active Record Associations

if ur asscociation is "Tip belongs to a Team " and "Team can have many Tips" then the association u defined in the question is correct.
if u want to created multiple tips when a team is created or add/edit/delete tips for a already created team, have a look at "accepts_nested_attributes_for" and https://github.com/ryanb/nested_form.
If u can get the team name using '#team.name' then u should get it using "#tip.team.name"

Related

Question about table/models logic before database generation

Im trying to make my first side project using rails to learn would you kindly help me understand this?
The basic idea is to have a betting game where one user generates a new bet that can only be accepted by another user (only 2 competitors assigned for each bet, the creator and the other player).
I'm thinking about 2 tables:
users
bets
Normally I would just have a one to many relationship for the user that created the bet. But I'm confused about the 'competitor' column where another user is also a user with a user_id. How can I express this relationship better than this:  
After thinking it through it doesn't look like a good setup because I'm renaming a column where I'm storing the user_id and having a many to many 'through' model doesn't make sense since it is a "only one competitor can participate in that bet".
I was thinking about a 'one to one through' creating a 'competitors' table like so:
Could you explain to me how to build it in a better way?
Many thanks!
just an idea, you can do this with 2 foreign_keys
so user can be as creator or competitors, you can also makesure that creator_id and competitor_id cannot be same value since user cannot bet with self
class Bet < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :creator, foreign_key: "creator_id", class_name: "User"
belongs_to :competitor, foreign_key: "competitor_id", class_name: "User"
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# as creator to create bet
has_many: creator_bets, foreign_key: :creator_id, class_name: "Bet"
# as competitor to create bet
has_many: competitor_bets, foreign_key: :competitor_id, class_name: "Bet"
end
#user = User.first
#user.creator_bets.build(...)
# this to create bet as creator
#user.competitor_bets.build(...)
# this to create bet as competitor
having a many to many 'through' model doesn't make sense since it is a
"only one competitor can participate in that bet".
Actually it does. Its is in many ways simpler than having muliple assocations pointing to the same table as you don't have to deal with the situation where a user could be in either column which requires something like:
# this gets much messier as you have to deal with more complex problems
Bet.where('bets.user_id = :id OR bets.competitor_id = :id', id: params[:user_id])
A many to many association also gives you the option of removing that limitation later with minimal redesign.
Given the following associations:
# This represents an event that users can bet on
# for example Elon Musk being the first man on mars.
class Event < ApplicationRecord
has_many :bets
has_many :users, through: :bets
end
class User < ApplicationRecord
has_many :bets
has_many :events, through: :bets
end
# This is the "join model" that joins User and Event
# columns:
# - user_id [bigint, fk]
# - event_id [bigint, fk]
# - amount [decimal]
class Bet < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :event
end
You can simply create a bet by:
#event = Event.create!(description: "Elon Musk will be the first man on mars.")
#event.bets.new(user: User.first, amount: 500)
You can of course cap the number of users to two by adding a custom validation or in your controllers. If you only have two you can assume that event.users.first is the creator and event.users.last is the competitor.

How do you identify models that contain related records in Ruby on Rails?

I'm sure my wording isn't great which explains why I'm failing at searching. I'm trying to work out how to identify records that are related to two others. Example will make it clearer.
Model Contest has a has_many relation to Results. The results have a Team number(but lets use letters for Clarity)
So in this example I'm trying to find all the Contests that Team A and Team D have both attended.
I want to get back a enumerator of all the Contests that fit this condition so I can then compare the two teams to each other.
I apologize for this not being the best write up, I'm struggling for the terms to define what I'm trying to do. Thank you for your help, time and patience!
Given:
class Contest < ApplicationRecord
has_many :results
has_many :teams, through: :results
end
class Result < ApplicationRecord
has_many :teams
belongs_to :contest
end
class Team < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :result
delegate :contest, to: :result
end
This will set up your associations, and let you access Contest from Team. The delegate method says "if I call team.contest, do team.result.contest instead".
Hope that helps!
EDIT
And if you're wanting to gather the contests:
Contest.joins(results: :teams).where(teams: { id: team_a.id })
Contest.joins(results: :teams).where(teams: { id: team_b.id })
The problem is you would need to join the same table twice, once with team A results and once with team B results. You need to reference them as separate tables. You can use Arel and assign unique names to the two instance of the table.
contests_between = Arel::Table.new(:contests, as: 'contests_between')
team_a_results = Arel::Table.new(:results, as: team_a_results)
team_b_results = Arel::Table.new(:results, as: team_b_results)
relation = contests_between.project(Arel.sql('*')).
join(team_a_results).on(contests_between[:id].eq(team_a_results[:contest_id])).
join(team_b_results).on(contests_between[:id].eq(team_b_results[:contest_id]))
And then you can do...
relation = relation.where(team_a_results[:team_id].eq(1)).where(team_b_results[:team_id].eq(2))
#contests = relation.to_sql
# above assumes team_a is id 1 and team_b is id 2... if the teams are already loaded you could substitute team_a.id and team_b.id

Rails checkboxes for a has_many :through association

A person can compete in various events, but they must enter a partner's name for that event. This association is stored in an entry, which contains a field for the partner's name.
class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :entries
has_many :events, :through => :entries
validates_presence_of :name
end
class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
end
class Entry < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :person
belongs_to :event
validates_presence_of :partner_name
end
The question is: How do you create a single page form that allows a person to enter themselves in multiple events and input their partners' names? I've tried to implement an all_entries method in the person model that will return an array of entry objects for all the available events, and an all_entries_attributes method that will update, create, and delete entry objects, but I can't seem to find a good, clean way to do this. I know this is a rather open ended question, but this must be a pattern that someone else in the rails community has encountered before, so I'm hoping there is a good solution to it.
If you are still looking for the answer you might want to check out my question and answer that I found.
So you want a page in which you can create events for a user, and add people to those events
I won't give you a plain solution because there's some work to an implementation for this, but I will recommend checking out these railscasts about nested model forms
part1 and part2

In has_many :through, what is the correct way to create object inheritance

I've hit something that I don't understand how to model with Rails associations and neither STI nor polymorphism seem to address it.
I want to be able to access attributes from a join table via the collection that's created by has_many :through.
In the code below, this means that I want to be able to access the name and description of a committee position via the objects in the .members collection but as far as I can see I can't do that. I have to go through the original join table.
e.g. modelling a club and it's committee members
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :full_name,
:email
has_many: committee_positions
has_many: committees, :through => committee_positions
end
class Committee < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :name
has_many :committee_positions
has_many :members, :through => :committee_positions
end
class CommitteePosition < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :user_id,
:committee_id,
:member_description,
:role_title
belongs_to :committee
belongs_to :user
end
Assume that each committee position instance has a unique description
i.e. the description is particular to both the member and the committee and so has to be stored on the join table and not with either the user or the club.
e.g.
Committee member: Matt Wilkins
Role: "Rowing club president"
Description: "Beats the heart of the rowing club to his own particular drum"
Is there a way to access the data in the join table via the committee.members collection?
While active record gives us this great alias for going directly to the members, there doesn't seem to be any way to access the data on the join table that created the collection:
I cannot do the following:
rowing_committee.members.find_by_role_title('president').name
Each item in the .members collection is a user object and doesn't seem to have access to either the role or description that's stored in the CommitteePositions join table.
The only way to do this would be:
rowing_committee.committee_positions.find_by_role_title('president').user.name
This is perfectly do-able but is clunky and unhelpful. I feel like the use-case is sufficiently generic that I may well be missing something.
What I would like to access via objects in the committee.members collection
member
- full_name
- email
- role_title (referenced from join table attributes)
- member_description (referenced from join table attributes)
This is only a small thing but it feels ugly. Is there a clean way to instruct the "member" objects to inherit the information contained within the join table?
-------------- addendum
On working through this I realise that I can get half way to solving the problem by simply defining a new class for committee member and referencing that instead of user in the has_many :through relationship. It works a little bit better but is still pretty clunky
class Committee < ActiveRecord::Base
...
has_many :committee_positions
has_many :members,
:through => :committee_positions,
:class_name => 'CommitteeMember'
...
end
class CommitteeMember < User
def description( committee )
self.committees.find_by_committee_id( committee.id ).description
end
def role( committee )
self.committees.find_by_committee_id( committee.id ).description
end
end
Now this is getting closer but it still feels clunky in that the code to use it would be:
committee = Committee.first
president_description = committee.members.find_by_title('president').description( committee )
Is there any way to initialize these objects with the committee they are referencing?
I think you could use some delegation here. In your Committee_Position class:
class Committee_Position < ActiveRecord::Base
attr_accessible :user_id,
:committee_id,
:member_description,
:role_title
belongs_to :committee
belongs_to :user
delegate :name, :email, :to => :user
end
so you could do what you say you want:
rowing_club.committee_members.find_by_role_title('president').name

Linking 2nd row to different database table, in rails

lets say I have the Users table, and the Team table.
In Rails, I know how to link the user_id column in the Team table to the Users table. But what if I have a second column I also want to link to the user's table, such as user_id2 (this essentially creates an order in the team table)?
Is there a solution, or something I don't know about to do what I'm trying? I also don't think the "has_many" is what I'm looking for, because user_id might be the team manager, and user_id2 might be the team captain, i.e. they have different roles affiliated with them, and order is important.
Thanks!
Edit: for my purposes, I also wouldn't need more than these two user relations. (i.e. cases for three wont be relevant)
You may want to look into STI (look for Single Table Inheritance on that page) or Polymorphic Associations. Either would allow you to express your intent a bit more clearly, although there isn't enough information in your question for me to puzzle out which would fit best.
Give those a read and see whether they accomplish what you want.
First here is a way to do this in one direction (Team -> User), but it wouldn't work for the reverse direction, and there's a better option I'll get into afterwards. The first one assumes you have columns named manager_id and captain_id on the teams table.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
end
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :manager, :class_name => ::User
belongs_to :captain, :class_name => ::User
end
However, I'd be surprised if a Team only consisted of two Users (the manager and captain) - it's more likely that you'd want a join table to track all of the users' team memberships. That join table (called team_memberships in this example) could have a role column that holds the manager/captain info, as well as any other data you have. This way is a lot more flexible, and offers additional benefits, like being able to track historical team data if team members change over time, which they will.
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :team_memberships
has_many :users, :through => :team_memberships
def captain
team_memberships.captain.first
end
def manager
team_memberships.manager.first
end
end
class TeamMembership < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :team
# You'll need some database-level UNIQUE INDEXes here to make sure
# you don't get multiple captains / managers per team, and also
# some validations to help with error messages.
named_scope :captain, :conditions => {:role => "captain"}
named_scope :manager, :conditions => {:role => "manager"}
end
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
# depending on the rules about teams, maybe these should be has_many...
has_one :team_membership
has_one :team, :through => :team_memberships
end
Check out http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html for more details.

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