Auction associations and methods

Rails
1

hello… I’m trying to start an auction site and I need some help with
the modeling of auctions and bids.

Would it be better to have auctions have many bids and bids belong to
auctions, or
Auction has one bid, bid belongs to auction?

Also, how would I call the bid object on the auction to change the
:current_price attribute on auction, increment info it up by 1 dollar?
Thanks for your help.

2

On 16 November 2014 03:14, Clay McCullough [email protected] wrote:

hello… I’m trying to start an auction site and I need some help with the
modeling of auctions and bids.

Would it be better to have auctions have many bids and bids belong to auctions,
or
Auction has one bid, bid belongs to auction?

What does an Auction object represent? It may help to tell us some of
the attributes of Auction to give us a better understanding. Having
answered that the question is how many bids are associated with an
auction? If the answer is many then it you must use auction has many
bids, otherwise it would only be able to be associated with one bid.

Also, how would I call the bid object on the auction to change the
:current_price attribute on auction, increment info it up by 1 dollar? Thanks for
your help.

Is the current price the highest of the prices in the bids? In which
case you should probably not store the current price at all, but work
it out when needed from the associated bids. Only have it stored
separately if it becomes a performance issue as it will likely
complicate the code significantly.

Colin

3

Well the auction object needs to be the auction itself, where users join
and bid… If my reasoning is flawed I would love some ideas.

As for the bidding, I was thinking that instead of there being a highest
bidder, I would simply have a button that the users could click that
would increase the price by one dollar every time. Is there a way I
could do this?
Clay

4

On 16 November 2014 15:48, Clay McCullough [email protected] wrote:

Well the auction object needs to be the auction itself, where users join and
bid… If my reasoning is flawed I would love some ideas.

As for the bidding, I was thinking that instead of there being a highest bidder,
I would simply have a button that the users could click that would increase the
price by one dollar every time. Is there a way I could do this?

Are you just thinking of keeping track of the current price and which
user it is then? I think there may be a problem with that, I think
you will need to track the history of all bids in case there is a
dispute from a user. Without the full history you would not be able
to demonstrate the sequence of +1s

Also what would happen if 500 users all clicked the +$1 within a
second of each other? The last one could end up having made a bid
$499 more than he anticipated.

Colin

5

On 16 November 2014 16:11, Clay McCullough [email protected] wrote:

Exactly. These are some problems I haven’t figured out how to solve! This is my
first web application. I have thought about all users clicking at the same time…
What would be a good way to keep track of the users, have a record of the bidding,
and increment the price the same amount every time? Would it be a method in the
model or controller or what?

Please quote the previous message when replying and insert your
comments at appropriate points, it makes it easier to follow the
thread. Otherwise someone seeing your previous message will have no
idea what you are saying ‘exactly’ to. Thanks.

Don’t worry about where methods go yet, get the models and
associations sorted. It seems to me you are going to have to have
auctions, users, bids with appropriate associations. The +1 button
should not show +1 but show the new bid amount (current + 1) and that
value should be posted when he clicks, so there is no confusion over
the amount he is bidding. By keeping all the bids in the database
then you have a history of what happened.

You will need something like
user has many bids
auction has many bids
bid belongs to user
bid belongs to auction

Colin

6

On Sunday, November 16, 2014 10:40:33 AM UTC-6, Colin L. wrote:

comments at appropriate points, it makes it easier to follow the

thread. Otherwise someone seeing your previous message will have no
idea what you are saying ‘exactly’ to. Thanks.

Ok sorry, im learning :slight_smile: this is my first post here.

Don’t worry about where methods go yet, get the models and
associations sorted. It seems to me you are going to have to have
auctions, users, bids with appropriate associations. The +1 button
should not show +1 but show the new bid amount (current + 1) and that
value should be posted when he clicks, so there is no confusion over
the amount he is bidding. By keeping all the bids in the database
then you have a history of what happened.

Ok! yes that makes sense. that way my users wont be confused or the
system
hopefully wont be broken if there is a lot of activity at the same time.

You will need something like
user has many bids
auction has many bids
bid belongs to user
bid belongs to auction

Colin

Alrighty. That is what I thought i would need to do for the
associations.
Thanks for your help Colin, I will do some more reading on those
associations in the Rails Guides. I will need help with the methods once
I
have that established, if you dont mind. Thanks for your time.
Clay

7

Exactly. These are some problems I haven’t figured out how to solve!
This is my first web application. I have thought about all users
clicking at the same time… What would be a good way to keep track of
the users, have a record of the bidding, and increment the price the
same amount every time? Would it be a method in the model or controller
or what?

8

On 16 November 2014 17:03, Clay McCullough [email protected] wrote:

…
Alrighty. That is what I thought i would need to do for the associations.
Thanks for your help Colin, I will do some more reading on those
associations in the Rails Guides. I will need help with the methods once I
have that established, if you dont mind. Thanks for your time.

Can I check that you have already worked right through a good tutorial
such as railstutorial.org (including doing the exercises and so on).
If not then I highly recommend doing so, it will save you (and us)
time in the long run.

Colin

9

I started it but never finished it. I will go through it all a did I
have any more questions I will let you know: thanks for your help
Colin… Have a good one.

10

No I did not finish that… I will try to finish it and if I have any
more questions, I will let you know. Thanks Colin!