Complex Through Statement

Rails
1

Quick Overview:

I have an ‘Employee’, some ‘Merchants’ and some ‘Products’. A
‘Merchant’ has many ‘Products’. An ‘Employee’ has multiple ‘Merchants’,
depending on their relationship. For example, the Employee may be the
enrollment contact for one merchant and the support contact for another.
Therefore, my Employee class looks like this:

class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :enrollment_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”,
:foreign_key => :enrollment_employee_id
has_many :support_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”, :foreign_key
=> :support_employee_id

end

And my Merchant class looks like this:

class Merchant < ActiveRecord::Base

belongs_to :enrollment_employee, :class_name => “Employee”,
:foreign_key => “enrollment_employee_id”
belongs_to :support_employee, :class_name => “Employee”, :foreign_key
=> “support_employee_id”

has_many :products

end

I’d like to use :through in the association so that I can get all of the
enrollment products and all of the support products for the Employee.
Ideally it would look like:

class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :enrollment_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”,
:foreign_key => :enrollment_employee_id
has_many :support_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”, :foreign_key
=> :support_employee_id

has_many :enrollment_products, :through => :enrollment_merchants
has_many :support_products, :through => :support_merchants

end

But that obviously doesn’t work. Can I make this work somehow?

2

On 3/31/06, Stephen G. [email protected] wrote:

3

you need to use :source on the :through association

basically the way :through works is that it tries to infer the name of
the
name of the association, but in your case it can’t

if you don’t use :source, the has_many will try to find an association
called :supported_products in the mechant class, but it can’t, there is
only
:products, and that is what :source does, it says, “look for this
association in the join class”.

I’m new to :through as well, but this is what it seems to be intended
for.

class Employee < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :enrolled_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”, :foreign_key
=>
“enrollment_employee_id”
has_many :supported_merchants, :class_name => “Merchant”, :foreign_key
=>
“support_employee_id”
has_many :enrolled_products, :through => :enrolled_merchants, :source
=>
:products
has_many :supported_products, :through => :supported_merchants,
:source =>
:products
end

class Merchant < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :enrollment_employee, :class_name => “Employee”
belongs_to :support_employee, :class_name => “Employee”
has_many :products
end

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :merchant
end

4

Thanks, I completely missed that at the bottom of the documentation.
That worked like a charm.