"for column in..." not picking up _id columns

Rails
1

My code executes fully:

<% for column in ModelName.content_columns %>

<%= column.human_name %>
<% end %>

but it does not pick up any columns in my model’s table that end in
“_id”.

Is this by design?

Is there a helper method that will reference the related tables? Or
will I need to code the column titles and detail records by hand?

Learning…

2

Ryan wrote:

Yes. From
http://api.rubyonrails.com/classes/ActiveRecord/Base.html#M000888

“Returns an array of column objects where the primary id, all columns
ending in “_id” or “_count”, and columns used for single table
inheritance have been removed.”

Is there a helper method that will reference the related tables? Or
will I need to code the column titles and detail records by hand?

You want to use ModelName.columns if you want the columns ending in _id.

Learning…

http://api.rubyonrails.com/ is your friend and teacher. You can look at
the source for content_columns if you want to reject some of the other
columns that content_columns rejects, but keep the columns ending in
_id.

–

Ray

3

Ryan wrote:

My code executes fully:

<% for column in ModelName.content_columns %>

<%= column.human_name %>
<% end %>

but it does not pick up any columns in my model’s table that end in
“_id”.

Is this by design?

Is there a helper method that will reference the related tables? Or
will I need to code the column titles and detail records by hand?

Learning…

The …_id columns are not “content_columns” according to rails.
They’re used to link to other models.

If you have Company containing many People, the people table will have a
company_id that links back to the company.

In Rails, you’d have the following models:

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :company
end

class Company < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :people
end

With that in place, and the correctly named _id field in the people
table, you can do the following:

person = Person.find(:first)
person.company (this is a Company object)

or

company = Company.find(:first)
company.people (this is an array of Person objects)

You could add person to the company like this:

company.people << person

I recommend you stop typing at this point and read the Agile Web Dev
book before going any further. I promise it’ll be worth it.

Alan