Always eager load

Rails
1

Is it possible to make a model always eager load an association,
without explicitly specifying it every time? For example:

class Article < AR::Base
has_one :author
end

I’m always going to need the Author for the Article, so is there a
way to set :include => :author by default for find()? I thought about
overwriting find() on Article and then just call super() with
the :include, but I’m not exactly sure how that would go. Any ideas?

Thanks

2

This seems to work:

def self.find(*args)
options = extract_options_from_args!(args)
options[:include] ||= :author
super(args.first, options)
end

Is there an easier way or are there any problems with this approach?

Thanks

3

If there’s already an options[:include] you’re going to use it then,
right?
[That’s what the code says.] If you’re wanting to append it to any other
manual :include, you’ll need to convert options[:include] to an array
and
all. If there’s no other possible models to include then you could
options[:include] = :author instead. But I’d say you’ve got it solved
already.

RSL

4

Actually, it’s the opposite, if there is an :include defined then it
does nothing, this way I can specify :include => nil if I didn’t want
to eager load (which won’t happen, but just in case). That seems to do
the job then, thank you.