Setting up a Rails has_many :through relationship with meaningful relationship table #rails #activerecord #relations

gistfile1.md

##References

• ActiveRecord Associations

##Create Models

Create tables:

rails g model Location

rails g model User

rails g model Checkin

Run migration:

rake db:migrate

Create migration:

rails g migration AddFieldsToTables

##Create Fields

Add to migration file:

class AddFieldsToTables < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    add_column :user, :name, :string
    add_column :location, :name, :string
    add_column :checkin, :user_id, :integer
    add_column :checkin, :location_id, :integer
    add_column :checkin, :source_id: integer
  end
end

Run migration:

rake db:migrate

##Create Relationships

Add to models/location.rb

class Location < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :checkins
  has_many :users, :through => :checkins, :uniq => true #if you need unique records
end

Add to models/user.rb

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :checkins
  has_many :locations, :through => :checkins, :uniq => true 
end

Add to models/checkins.rb

class Checkin < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :location
  belongs_to :user
end

##CRUD on has_many :through

Create new relationship

source_id = 1
@user = User.first
@location = Location.first
checkin = Checkin.new user: @user, lap: @lap, source_id: source_id

Count on association

@checkin_count = @user.locations.count

I would love to be able to use this but there is a problem with this migration. Can you help me debug this? Thanks!

class AddFieldsToTables < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :user, :name, :string
add_column :location, :name, :string
add_column :checkin, :user_id, :integer
add_column :checkin, :location_id, :integer
add_column :checkin, :source_id: integer
end
end

Maybe we should pluarize here:

class AddFieldsToTables < ActiveRecord::Migration
def change
add_column :users, :name, :string
add_column :locations, :name, :string
add_column :checkins, :user_id, :integer
add_column :checkins, :location_id, :integer
add_column :checkins, :source_id: integer
end
end

Sry for the gravedig but also a typo at the end:

add_column :checkins, :source_id, :integer

Don't forget to add an index to your foreign keys:

add_index :checkins, [:user_id, :location_id]

How should I use this in seed.rb? Can you provide an example to use this?

I have a very similar relation between a User model and an Institution model. They are in a many to many relationship, and I followed your gist code and everything is working cool, the database is correctly setup but when I try to load data using seeds I got an error:

NameError: uninitialized constant User::InstitutionsUser

What I tried? well I tried to initialize the relation doing this:

USER = User.create!(
  :usr_rut => 'DNI',
  :usr_name => 'Juanito',
  :usr_lastname_p => 'Mena',
  :usr_lastname_m => 'Gonzalez',
  :email => 'juanitomena@gmail.com',
  :password => 'surewhynot',
  :usr_is_admin => true,
  :user_status_id => ACTIVE_USER.id,
  :user_type_id => ADMIN_USER.id,
  :confirmed_at => DateTime.now
)

INSTITUTION_1 = Institution.create!(
  :ins_name => 'Clínica Alemana',
  :ins_address => 'Av. Pedro de Valdivia 342',
  :ins_phone => 228113245,
  :ins_email => 'clinicalemana@gmail.com',
  :comuna_id => LASCONDES.id,
  :institution_type_id => CLINICA.id
)

USER.institutions << INSTITUTION_1

I'm a rails noobie so my first attempt to setup this was creating a normal/regular many to many relation, not using through. I'm using devise for the user management, but right now I need to build a custom form to include this institution data, and associate the new user with an already created institution, and is not persisting the data to the model, but the form is sending the data to the controller as a User field.

Hope y'all can help me out!

Thanks!

Thank you very much!