Rails: Overriding ActiveRecord association method - ruby-on-rails

Question

Is there a way to override one of the methods provided by an ActiveRecord association?
Say for example I have the following typical polymorphic has_many :through association:
class Story < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :taggings, :as => :taggable
has_many :tags, :through => :taggings, :order => :name
end
class Tag < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :taggings, :dependent => :destroy
has_many :stories, :through => :taggings, :source => :taggable, :source_type => "Story"
end
As you probably know this adds a whole slew of associated methods to the Story model like tags, tags<<, tags=, tags.empty?, etc.
How do I go about overriding one of these methods? Specifically the tags<< method. It's pretty easy to override a normal class methods but I can't seem to find any information on how to override association methods. Doing something like
def tags<< *new_tags
#do stuff
end
produces a syntax error when it's called so it's obviously not that simple.

Answer 1

You can use block with has_many to extend your association with methods. See comment "Use a block to extend your associations" here.
Overriding existing methods also works, don't know whether it is a good idea however.
has_many :tags, :through => :taggings, :order => :name do
def << (value)
"overriden" #your code here
super value
end
end

Answer 2

If you want to access the model itself in Rails 3.2 you should use proxy_association.owner
Example:
class Author < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :books do
def << (book)
proxy_association.owner.add_book(book)
end
end
def add_book (book)
# do your thing here.
end
end
See documentation

Answer 3

I think you wanted def tags.<<(*new_tags) for the signature, which should work, or the following which is equivalent and a bit cleaner if you need to override multiple methods.
class << tags
def <<(*new_tags)
# rawr!
end
end

Answer 4

You would have to define the tags method to return an object which has a << method.
You could do it like this, but I really wouldn't recommend it. You'd be much better off just adding a method to your model that does what you want than trying to replace something ActiveRecord uses.
This essentially runs the default tags method adds a << method to the resulting object and returns that object. This may be a bit resource intensive because it creates a new method every time you run it
def tags_with_append
collection = tags_without_append
def collection.<< (*arguments)
...
end
collection
end
# defines the method 'tags' by aliasing 'tags_with_append'
alias_method_chain :tags, :append

Answer 5

The method I use is to extend the association. You can see the way I handle 'quantity' attributes here: https://gist.github.com/1399762
It basically allows you to just do
has_many : tags, :through => : taggings, extend => QuantityAssociation
Without knowing exactly what your hoping to achieve by overriding the methods its difficult to know if you could do the same.

Answer 6

This may not be helpful in your case but could be useful for others looking into this.
Association Callbacks:
http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveRecord/Associations/ClassMethods.html
Example from the docs:
class Project
has_and_belongs_to_many :developers, :after_add => :evaluate_velocity
def evaluate_velocity(developer)
...
end
end
Also see Association Extensions:
class Account < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :people do
def find_or_create_by_name(name)
first_name, last_name = name.split(" ", 2)
find_or_create_by_first_name_and_last_name(first_name, last_name)
end
end
end
person = Account.first.people.find_or_create_by_name("David Heinemeier Hansson")
person.first_name # => "David"
person.last_name # => "Heinemeier Hansson"

Answer 7

Rails guides documents about overriding the added methods directly.
OP's issue with overriding << probably is the only exception to this, for which follow the top answer. But it wouldn't work for has_one's = assignment method or getter methods.