Confused about Rails has_and_belongs_to_many Association - ruby-on-rails

I have two models, items and categories which have a many-to-many relationship using the has_and_belongs_to_many association.
In my models I have
class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :categories
end
and
class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :items
end
I created a join table "categories_items":
create_table "categories_items", :id => false, :force => true do |t|
t.integer "category_id"
t.integer "item_id"
end
I'm not getting any errors, but I'm just a bit confused about exactly what the association allows. Right now, if I have some category #category, I can find all the Items in it by doing
#category.items
I assumed that I could find the categories associated with a given Item #item by doing
#item.categories
However I get an error that says
ActiveModel::MissingAttributeError: missing attribute: category
Am I misunderstanding how a has_and_belongs_to_many association functions, or am I missing something in my code? Thank you!
Edit - Additional Information:
I think the confusion lies in how I'm supposed to assign items/categories. Currently, I'm creating them independently:
#item = Item.new
... add attributes ...
#item.save
and
#category = Category.new
... add attributes ...
#category.save
and then associating them with
#category.items << #item
#item.categories << #category

I think I've experienced what you're going through once before. I believe the confusion is in how to connect through other tables. In the following, one user can have many skills. A skill is also connected to many users. Something similar to this may work for you ^_^
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :skills_users
has_many :skills, through: :skills_users
class SkillsUser < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :skill
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :skills_users
has_many :users, through: :skills_users

Related

How to fetch data with relation in rails?

I have students table that is related to schools table. The problem is, when I try to fetch all schools' data, it does not include the students that are associated in the api response.
But it more confuses me, student name was displayed in terminal when I try to loop and print. Although I have tried the below line but still won't work.
has_many :student, foreign_key: :school_id, primary_key: :id
Do you have idea why?
The students table has columns school_id that referenced to schools table.
schools_controller.rb
class SchoolsController < ApplicationController
def index
schools = School.includes(:student)
schools.each do |school|
puts school.student.collect(&:name) // student displayed in terminal
end
render json: { message: "sample", data: schools }, status: :ok
end
end
school.rb
class School < ApplicationRecord
has_many :student
end
student.rb
class Student < ApplicationRecord
end
12345_create_students.rb
class CreateStudents < ActiveRecord::Migration[7.0]
def change
create_table :students do |t|
t.references :school, foreign_key: true
t.string :name
...
end
end
end
Model relations is actually fine. Your problem probably is in your controller.
Use preload instead of include, and in your return statement you should include the student.
learn the differences here
Your code should look like these:
schools = School.preload(:student)
render json: schools, include: :student
Read https://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html for
and try below code
school.rb
class School < ApplicationRecord
has_many :students
end
student.rb
class Student < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :school
end

Loose associations in ActiveRecord

I'm new to Ruby on Rails and I'm trying to build a relationship between the classes Club, Sponsor and Match.
The relationhip has to be like:
One Club has zero to many Sponsors
One Sponsor has zero to many Matches
One Match has zero to many Sponsors
My models look like this
class Match < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :team
has_many :matchplayers
has_many :players, through: :matchplayers
has_many :sponsors
end
class Club < ApplicationRecord
has_many :teams
has_many :sponsors
accepts_nested_attributes_for :teams, :reject_if => :all_blank, :allow_destroy => true
end
class Sponsor < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :club
end
and my migrations file for the Sponsor model looks like this:
class CreateSponsors < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
def change
create_table :sponsors do |t|
t.text :name
t.text :url
t.text :imgUrl
t.references :club, foreign_key: true
t.timestamps
end
add_reference :matches, :sponsor, index: true
add_foreign_key :matches, :sponsor
end
end
I have no problems retrieving sponsors for each club instance but I'm having trouble retrieving the sponsors associated with each match.
In my matches_controller.rb I have this
def show
#match = Match.find(params[:id])
render :json => #match.to_json(:include => [:players, :sponsors])
end
But when I try to run it the script fails. with the error message "no such column: sponsors.match_id" as the script tries to run the following SQL statement
SELECT "sponsors".* FROM "sponsors" WHERE "sponsors"."match_id" = ?
What I'd really like it to do would be to run the following statement
SELECT "sponsors".*
FROM "sponsors"
LEFT JOIN "matches"
ON "matches"."sponsor_id" = "sponsors"."id"
WHERE "matches"."id" = ?
And placing the resulting array into the output JSON's "sponsors" attribute.
I have been looking into the different Active Record association types and I feel like the type of association I need for this task is looser than the ones described in the documentation.
You need many-to-many relationship. In rails where are 2 ways to do this. You can read about this here. In general you will need to add has_and_belongs_to_many to Sponsor and to Match. And create 'join-model' which will contain match_id + sponsor_id. In this way ActiveRecord will be able to create suitable SQL query due to 'join-table'.

How can I use two records from the same Rails model as foreign keys in a different Rails model?

I have two models: person.rb and relationship.rb
I need my :relationships table to reference two rows from the :people table as foreign keys.
Here are the migrations for both tables:
class CreatePeople < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
def change
create_table :people do |t|
t.string :first_name
t.string :second_name
t.integer :age
t.string :gender
t.timestamps
end
end
end
class CreateRelationships < ActiveRecord::Migration[5.1]
def change
create_table :relationships do |t|
t.references :person_a
t.references :person_b
t.string :status
t.timestamps
end
end
end
The idea is the :person_a and :person_b fields will both be individual records from the :people table referenced as foreign keys, while the :status field will just be a description of their relationship ("Married", "Friends", "Separated", etc.)
I'm trying to find out:
1) What is the additional code I have to write in the CreateRelationships migration above in order to set :person_a and :person_b up as foreign keys from the :people table?
2) What code do I need to write in the model files (person.rb and relationship.rb) for both tables below to define the relationship structure I'm talking about?
class Person < ApplicationRecord
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord
end
I've found one other question on here that deals with this issue, but the answers given were conflicting, some incomplete, and others working with older versions of Rails. None of them have worked for me.
I'm using Rails 5.1.4
You have defined you migration correctly just add the following in your model to define the relationship between the model.
class Person < ApplicationRecord::Base
has_many :relationships, dependent: :destroy
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord::Base
belongs_to :person_a, :class_name => 'Person'
belongs_to :person_b, :class_name => 'Person'
end
This allows you to access the Person that a Relationship belongs to like this:
#relationship.person_a #user assigned as the first person.
#relationship.person_b #user assigned as the second person.
Hope this works.
EDIT: Apologies for a rushed and wrong answer.
Initially, I thought that simple has_many/belongs_to association is possible and sufficient.
class Person < ApplicationRecord
has_many :relationships #dependent: :destroy
end
class Relationship < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :person_a, class_name: "Person"
belongs_to :person_b, class_name: "Person"
enum status: [:married, :friends, :separated]
end
As #engineersmnky pointed out, has_many association can't work here because there is no person_id column in relationships table. Since we can declare only one custom foreign key in has_many association, it's not possible to declare it here this way. belongs_to will work, but I don't think that's enough.
One way is to skip declaring has_many and stick to custom method for querying relationships:
class Person < ApplicationRecord
def relationships
Relationship.where("person_a_id = ? OR person_b_id = ?", id, id)
end
end
It will give you an ActiveRecord::Relation to work with, containing exactly the records you need. The drawbacks of this solution are numerous - depending on your needs, you will probably need more code for inserting data, starting with a setter method to assign relationships to people...
What could be a real solution, is to have a composite primary key in Relationship model - composed of :person_a_id and :person_b_id. ActiveRecord doesn't support composite primary keys, but this gem seems to fill the gap. Apparently it allows to declare such key and use it as a foreign key in a has_many association. The catch is that your person_a/person_b pairs would have to be unique across relationships table.
I had to do the same for a chat module, this is an example to how you can do it:
class Conversations < ApplicationRecord
belongs_to :sender, foreign_key: :sender_id, class_name: 'User'
belongs_to :recipient, foreign_key: :recipient_id, class_name: 'User'
end
class User < ApplicationRecord
...
has_many :conversations
has_many :senders, through: :conversations, dependent: :destroy
has_many :recipients, through: :conversations, dependent: :destroy
...
end
More explanations at complex-has-many-through
Hope it helps,
You can do like this
In relationship model write
belongs_to : xyz, class_name: "Person", foreign_key: "person_a"
belongs_to : abc, class_name: "Person", foreign_key: "person_b"
In Person model write
has_many :relationships, dependent: :destroy
hope it will help

A Ruby on Rails has_many relationship.

I'm new to RoR and working on my first project. The basic concept behind the idea is to connect "Users" that have chosen a set a "Skills" with other Users that that have submitted a "Help Request" that deals specifically with those chosen skills. An app that connects Skilled Users with Users that need help if you will. My question has to do with the relationship between the Users, Skills, and Help_Request Models. It feels like a "has_many :through association" or maybe "polymorphic association" might be in order for this kind of three way relationship? Really not sure?
Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
A polymorphic association is when a model should belong to another model. Let's say when you a comment model. You can comment on a post and a comment itself. That's when you would use a polymorphic.
In your case a simple has_many through would do.
It should look like this
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :skills
has_many :help_requests, through: :skills
end
class Skill < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :helpRequest
end
class HelpRequest < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :skills
has_many :users, through :skills
end
For more information the docs
I'm afraid ShivamD's answer will not suffice. That would require duplicate Skills, and queries the relevant User.help_requests via relationship, where instead you need an intersection.
Not just that, Users who create HelpRequests will already have a has_many relationship. That makes sense.
I won't include schema for the HABTM I'm about to suggest (see here), but I will cover the models. Essentially what you want:
skill = Skill.create(name: "My Skill")
user.skills << skill
help_request.skills << skill
user.matched_help_requests
#> [help_request]
Which can be achieved as follows:
class User
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
def matched_help_requests
HelpRequest.joins(:skills).where("skills.id IN(?)", skills.pluck(:id))
end
end
class HelpRequest
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
end
class Skill
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
has_and_belongs_to_many :help_requests
end
EDIT: here's the schmea for the HABTM:
rails g migration add_skills_join_tables
within migration
def change
create_table :skills_users, id: false do |t|
t.references :skill
t.references :user
end
create_table :help_requests_skills, id: false do |t|
t.references :skill
t.references :help_request
end
add_index :skills_users, [:skill_id, :user_id]
add_index :help_request_skills, [:skill_id, :help_request_id]
end
One hay is to create a has_and_belongs_to_manyrelation between the Users and Helprequests and Skills, so you end up with this:
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
end
class Help_request < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :skills
end
class Skills < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :users
has_and_belongs_to_many :help_requests
end
Then you need to create the tables
rails g migration add_skills_users_table
rails g migration add_help_requests_skills_table
In the end run rake db:migrate
You can then search for it using User.first.skills

Has many :through association not found

I have two models that can have tags added to them.
Player
Ticket
and I have a Tag model which belongs to both so I have two join models
tag_ticket
tag_player
I am getting a Could not find the association :tag_tickets in model Ticket error but my association is in there.
class Ticket < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :tag_tickets
has_many :tags, :through => :tag_tickets
end
I'm just focusing on the Ticket model but the player model should look similar.
this is my migration for TagTicket
class CreateTagTickets < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
create_table :tag_tickets do |t|
t.integer :ticket_id
t.integer :tag_id
t.timestamps
end
end
end
You need to specify the :tag_tickets join first like this:
class Ticket < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :tag_tickets
has_many :tags, :through => :tag_tickets
end
You would also need to specify the joins in your TagTicket model:
class TagTicket < ActiveRecored::Base
belongs_to :ticket
belongs_to :tag
end
Alternatively, you can skip all this and use a habtm join (only recommended if the tag_tickets join is truly only used as a join and has no primary key for itself). In this case you would have no TagTicket model (just a tag_tickets table) and the Ticket model would look like this:
class Ticket < ActiveRecord::Base
has_and_belongs_to_many :tags
end

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