# Improving this messy has\_many :through with :include

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/improving-this-messy-has-many-through-with-include/159711>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [February 7, 2009, 1:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/improving-this-messy-has-many-through-with-include/159711 "2009-02-07T13:33:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![alan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/a/a87d85/32.png) [@alan](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/alan)\
**Post date:** [February 7, 2009, 1:33pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/improving-this-messy-has-many-through-with-include/159711/1 "2009-02-07T13:33:20Z")

</div>

I have a question about cleaning up a rather complex has\_many. I’ll  
describe the context in case it helps, but perhaps you can skip  
straight to the code below.

- I am designing a fantasy football type system.
- I am modeling a Team which consists of many Players.
- I am connecting Teams and Players via a Transfer join model.
- A Transfer also has two GameWeeks (a GameWeek encapsulates the  
start\_time and end\_time of a period of play).
- Transfer.from\_end\_of\_gameweek indicates the GameWeek from which the  
Player becomes part of the Team.
- Transfer.until\_end\_of\_gameweek indicates the GameWeek from which a  
Player ceases to be part of the Team.

So Transfers is essentially acting as a warehouse, storing history  
about all player transfers that have taken place (in the future I  
might make a dedicated warehouse but not yet).

Now, to determine which Players are playing for a Team at a given  
instant I have this:

```
class Team < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :transfers
  has_many :players, :through => :transfers,
    :include => [{ :transfers => :from_end_of_gameweek }, { :transfers
=> :until_end_of_gameweek }],
    :conditions => ['gameweeks.start_time <= ? AND (gameweeks.end_time
IS NULL OR ? < gameweeks.end_time)', Time.now.utc, Time.now.utc]
end
```

Thus I can say team.transfers to get a list of all Transfers the Team  
has made, or team.players to get the current squad.

It works, but that has\_many is a pretty unpleasant bit of code and the  
SQL doesn’t look the most efficient. The question is, can this be made  
more elegant and maybe efficient?

Thanks.