has_many :through with :primary_key on join table not working - ruby-on-rails

Question

In my Rails 3 project, I have a user model with a self referential join, through the follow model. I want to use this join table to find activity related to the followed user. I have almost everything set up correctly, except that the query generated by the join is totally ignoring the :primary_key option on the join model.
Here is the relevant schema for the relevant models:
create_table "users", :force => true do |t|
t.string "email", :default => "", :null => false
t.string "first_name"
t.string "last_name"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
create_table "follows", :force => true do |t|
t.integer "user_id"
t.integer "followed_user_id"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
create_table "activities", :force => true do |t|
t.integer "user_id"
t.text "body"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
Here's the associations in the models
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :follows
has_many :followed_users, :through => :follows
has_many :followed_activities, :through => :follows
has_many :activities
end
class Follow < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :user
belongs_to :followed_user, :class_name => "User"
has_many :followed_activities, :primary_key => :followed_user, :foreign_key => :user_id, :class_name => "Activity"
end
The following work just fine:
u = User.first
u.follows # returns corresponding records from the follows table
u.followed_users # returns all users that u is following
u.followed_users.first.activities # returns all activity records corresponding to the first person the user is following
Follow.first.activities # same as the previous
However, the following just returns an empty array:
u.followed_activities
Here is the sql that is generated from the last statement:
Activity Load (0.2ms) SELECT `activities`.* FROM `activities` INNER JOIN `follows` ON `activities`.user_id = `follows`.id WHERE ((`follows`.user_id = 1))
The reason it isn't working is because it is trying to join use 'follows'.id as the primary key rather than 'follows'.followed_user.
Is this a bug, or do I have to repeat the :primary_key declaration somewhere on the user model? I can't find any mention anywhere in the Rails api, or anywhere else online.
Rails Version: 3.0.7

Answer 1

I've found it intuitive to daisy chain relationships with the 'nested_has_many_through' gem, http://rubygems.org/gems/nested_has_many_through which will be a standard part of rails 3.1 and could give you another tool to tackle the issue here
It will let you do something like this:
class Author < User
has_many :posts
has_many :categories, :through => :posts, :uniq => true
has_many :similar_posts, :through => :categories, :source => :posts
has_many :similar_authors, :through => :similar_posts, :source => :author, :uniq => true
has_many :posts_of_similar_authors, :through => :similar_authors, :source => :posts, :uniq => true
has_many :commenters, :through => :posts, :uniq => true
end
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :author
belongs_to :category
has_many :comments
has_many :commenters, :through => :comments, :source => :user, :uniq => true
end
This has super-simplified my queries and collections. I hope you find an answer to your problem, it's a tough one!

Answer 2

Justin, you have 2 associations called "followed_activities". sure, they have different context (different models), but I'd like to ask you to try method inside the association block like this:
has_many :followed_users, :through => :follows do
def activities
end
end