Habtm foreign key must be manually done

Rails
1

I have a habtm relationship between User and Activity

when I create a new Activity why do I have to manually set the foreign
key
user_id in the activity table???

example

def create
@activity = Activity.new(params[:activity])
@activity.user_id = self.current_user.id #why is this
necessary??? but I guess rails can’t magically know what I mean by
user???
can it?

if @activity.save
@activity.users << User.find_by_id(self.current_user.id)
#habtm
end

end

cheer

dion

2

Hi Dion,

I’m a little confused by your example. Why does Activity have a
user_id on it if you have a HABTM relationship? There should be a
join table named “activities_users” that has only two columns,
“activity_id” and “user_id”, and you shouldn’t need a user_id column
on Activity.

This line:

 @activity.users << User.find_by_id(self.current_user.id )   #habtm

should also probably just be

 @activity.users << current_user

to save yourself some database hits.

Regards,

-Seth

3

On 5/24/07, Dion H. [email protected] wrote:

I have a habtm relationship between User and Activity

when I create a new Activity why do I have to manually set the foreign key
user_id in the activity table???

You don’t have to. The habtm relationship should set everything up
automatically.

    @activity.users << User.find_by_id(self.current_user.id )   #habtm

end

end

You’re forgetting that @activity is just an AR object, not a database
entry. In order to propagate the changes in the database you should
call the save method:

@activity.users << User.find_by_id(self.current_user.id )
@activity.save

–
Andrei M.
http://andreimaxim.ro

4

@activity.users << current_user

does the trick, cheers

still curbing my old school thinking

5

On 5/25/07, Andrei M. [email protected] wrote:
…

You’re forgetting that @activity is just an AR object, not a database
entry. In order to propagate the changes in the database you should
call the save method:

@activity.users << User.find_by_id(self.current_user.id )
@activity.save

Actually you should try

@activity.users << current_user
@activity.save

because you won’t have to do an extra query.

–
Andrei M.
http://andreimaxim.ro