Invalid source reflection macro?

Rails
1

I’m trying to model a somewhat complicated genetic relationship in
Rails.

class Gene < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :species, :foreign_key => “species_id”, :class_name =>
“Species”
has_many :genes_orthogroups, :class_name => ‘GenesOrthogroups’ #
join table model
has_many :orthogroups, :through => :genes_orthogroups
has_many :orthologs, :through => :orthogroups, :source
=> :genes, :conditions => ‘gene.species_id != ortholog.species_id’
end
class GenesOrthogroups < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :gene
belongs_to :orthogroup
end
class Orthogroup < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :genes_orthogroups, :class_name => ‘GenesOrthogroups’
has_many :genes, :through => :genes_orthogroups
belongs_to :species_pair, :class_name => ‘SpeciesPair’, :foreign_key
=> “species_pair_id”
end
class SpeciesPair < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :species1, :foreign_key => “species1_id”, :class_name =>
‘Species’
belongs_to :species2, :foreign_key => “species2_id”, :class_name =>
‘Species’
has_many :orthogroups
end
class Species < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :genes
has_many :species_pairs, :class_name => ‘SpeciesPair’
end

I’m trying to print out a list of the orthologs with a partial. The
list is generated with:
def find_ortholog_list(gene_id)
ortholog_list = []
Gene.find(gene_id).orthologs.each do |ortholog|
ortholog_list << ortholog
end
return OrthologList.new(ortholog_list)
end

I get the following error message:
Invalid source reflection macro :has_many :through for
has_many :orthologs, :through => :orthogroups. Use :source to specify
the source reflection.

If I change :source to :gene instead of :genes, I get:
Could not find the source association(s) :gene in model Orthogroup.
Try 'has_many :orthologs, :through => :orthogroups, :source =>
'. Is it one of :genes_orthogroups, :genes, or :species_pair?

Essentially, any given gene should have zero, one, or multiple
orthologs in another species. These are grouped into orthogroups, each
consisting of genes from two species, and representing a many-to-many
relationship. Genes in an orthogroup which are of the same species
would be paralogs instead. Because there are more than just two
species, a gene may participate in multiple orthogroups (up to one for
each additional species). The generalization for ortholog/paralog is
“homolog” or “homologue,” incidentally.

I’ve based most of this code on the p.369 explanation “Using Models as
Join Tables” in Agile Web D. with Rails (3rd Ed). I’m not
really sure why it fails, except for the fact that I’m trying to use
Gene as its own source for defining orthologs. What’s the proper way
to define this relationship?

Apologies for the complexity of the model. I couldn’t think of any
layman’s examples.

Thanks so much,
John

2

The :orthologs association is the problem - Rails doesn’t support
nesting :through associations. I recall there being a plugin around
someplace to do it, so you may want to look into that.

Depending on what you need, a simple instance method may work as well.
For example (on Gene):

def orthologs
genes_orthogroups.ortholog_groups_for(self).map { |g| g.gene }
end

On GenesOrthogroup:
named_scope ortholog_groups_for { |g| { :include => :gene, :conditions
=> [‘genes.species_id != ?’, g.species_id] } }

(not tested, but should be close to working)

A couple general things:

  • model names should be singular (GenesOrthogroup rather than
    GenesOrthogroups). Otherwise you’ll eventually run into issues.

  • when writing SQL fragments in conditions, table names are plural (so
    genes.whatever rather than gene.whatever).

  • the association macros have sensible defaults, so you can leave some
    options out. For instance, the :species association in Gene can be
    simplified to ‘belongs_to :species’ - Rails will find the correct FK
    (species_id) and class (Species).

–Matt J.

3

I’ll look at the rest of your example later, but…

John W. wrote:

The plural model name comes from the Agile Development book. They have
an example–categories_products, linking categories to products–which
they turn into a model. Should it be renamed category_product?
[…]

If I had to choose one of those options, I’d probably use
CategoryProduct and rename the table. However, I think neither option
is very good. What most people here seem to recommend is this: when
your join table becomes a model, take the time to come up with an
appropriate name for it.

For example, in this case, we might go from Category habtm Products
(with categories_products table) to

class Category
has_many :categorizations
has_many :products, :through => :categorizations
end

(likewise for Product)

class Categorization
belongs_to :category
belongs_to :product
end

Choosing an appropriate name for the join model will make future
development much easier and clearer.

Best,

Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
[email protected]

4

The plural model name comes from the Agile Development book. They have
an example–categories_products, linking categories to products–which
they turn into a model. Should it be renamed category_product? Or is
categories_product correct? I’m a bit confused about this, so thanks
for bringing it up.

I’ll look around for the plugin. Thanks so much, Matt!

John

5

So the plugin appears to work. FYI, it’s here:
git://github.com/ianwhite/nested_has_many_through.git

Unfortunately, I’m still having trouble setting up the condition. I’ve
renamed a few things and added appropriate associations:

class Gene < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :species
has_many :gene_orthogroup_linkers, :class_name =>
‘GeneOrthogroupLinker’
has_many :orthogroups, :through => :gene_orthogroup_linkers
has_many :ortholog_orthogroup_linkers, :class_name =>
‘GeneOrthogroupLinker’, :through => :orthogroups, :source
=> :gene_orthogroup_linkers
has_many :orthologs, :source => :gene, :through
=> :ortholog_orthogroup_linkers, :conditions => ‘genes.species_id !=
genes_2.species_id’
end

GeneOrthogroupLinker is the class that used to be GenesOrthogroups.

Mysql::Error: Unknown column ‘genes_2.species_id’ in ‘where clause’:
SELECT genes.* FROM genes INNER JOIN gene_orthogroup_linkers ON
( genes.id = gene_orthogroup_linkers.gene_id ) INNER JOIN orthogroups
ON ( gene_orthogroup_linkers.orthogroup_id = orthogroups.id ) INNER
JOIN gene_orthogroup_linkers gene_orthogroup_linkers_2 ON
( orthogroups.id = gene_orthogroup_linkers_2.orthogroup_id )
WHERE (gene_orthogroup_linkers_2.gene_id = 556 AND genes.species_id !
= genes_2.species_id)

So, it looks to me like the problem is that it selects from genes but
has no inner join to genes_2, only to gene_orthogroup_linkers_2. How
do I get it to INNER JOIN genes genes_2 ON
( gene_orthogroup_linkers_2.gene_id = genes_2.id AND genes.species_id !
= genes_2.species_id)?

It seems like as a work-around, I could add a species_id column on the
GeneOrthogroupLinker model, but that doesn’t seem like the cleanest
solution.

Incidentally, it seems unnecessary to join with orthogroups (why not
just join the two linkers with orthogroup_id?). Is this easily
fixable, or better left as-is?

I also tried the named_scope, but it doesn’t seem right for this
situation.

Best,
John

6

Have you tried passing the missing join directly, via the :join
option?

–Matt J.