Is there a way to use @today in a model?

Rails
1

I’m trying to get records from a has_many that are only from this
year.

has_many :visit, :conditions => “year = #{@today.year}”, :dependent
=> :destroy

This has trouble. it thinks @today is null… Any other ideas?

Bob

2

On Apr 17, 2010, at 10:30 PM, Bob S. wrote:

I’m trying to get records from a has_many that are only from this
year.

has_many :visit, :conditions => “year = #{@today.year}”, :dependent
=> :destroy

This has trouble. it thinks @today is null… Any other ideas?

Don’t you want :visits (with an s?)

has_many :visits, :conditions => “year =
SQL_FUNCTION_THAT_RETURNS_CURRENT_YEAR”,…

Replacing “SQL_FUNCTION…YEAR” with whatever works for your database.

If you want to specify the year, look into using a lambda for the
conditions…

-philip

3

On Sun, Apr 18, 2010 at 2:46 AM, Philip H. [email protected]
wrote:

Don’t you want :visits (with an s?)

has_many :visits, :conditions => “year =
SQL_FUNCTION_THAT_RETURNS_CURRENT_YEAR”,…

Replacing “SQL_FUNCTION…YEAR” with whatever works for your database.

If you want to specify the year, look into using a lambda for the
conditions…

I don’t think you can use a lambda on the :conditions option to
find/has_many…

but you can do it with a named scope

has_many :visits, :dependent => destroy
named_scope :this_year, lambda { { :conditions => { :year =>
Date.today.year } }}

Then to get the visits this year for a model referred to by the variable
model

model.visits.this_year

Alternatively, you could have a slightly different named scope which
would let you specify the year at run-time, assuming that @today might
not always Date.today, e.g. if you are using the user’s timezone.

named_scope :in_year, lambda { |year| {:conditions => {:year => year}}

Then you could use

model.visits.in_year(@today.year)

The reason you need to express this a a lambda is twofold:

  1. has_many and named_scope are evaluated in the context of the active
    record class, so @today is not an instance variable but a class
    instance variable, which is probably why it is nil.

  2. more importantly, @today is being evaluated at the time the
    association declaration is executed (during class definition time). If
    you want to use the value at the time you make the query, it needs to
    be a lambda so that the value gets evaluated each time.

HTH

Rick DeNatale

Blog: http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/
Github: rubyredrick (Rick DeNatale) · GitHub
Twitter: @RickDeNatale
WWR: http://www.workingwithrails.com/person/9021-rick-denatale
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickdenatale

4

On 18 April 2010 06:30, Bob S. [email protected] wrote:

I’m trying to get records from a has_many that are only from this
year.

has_many :visit, :conditions => “year = #{@today.year}”, :dependent
=> :destroy

This has trouble. it thinks @today is null… Any other ideas?

What is @today?

Colin

5

try using a range in the condition…
Post.all(:conditions=>{:created_at=>Time.now.beginning_of_year…Time.now.end_of_year})

you can also create a named scope (rails 2.3) in the belongs_to end of
the relationship
class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
named_scope :from_this_year, lambda { { :conditions=>{:created_at =>
Time.now.beginning_of_year…Time.now.end_of_year}}
end
…you need to use a lambda, otherwise the time value from app load is
used… which obviously wouldn’t be what you want.

you would use it like so
User.first.posts.from_this_year

or you could set up a has_many
class User < ActiveRecord::Base

has_many :posts_from_this_year, :class_name=>“Post”,
:conditions=>{:created_at=>Time.now.beginning_of_year…Time.now.end_of_year}
end
@user.posts_from_this_year