Newbie - HABTM confused

Rails
1

I have a users table. I have a assignment table. and I have to log in
to see my assignments. i can and I hasve a session id.
I can make a new assignment and save my id in the user_id field of the
assigment table.

I want to share my assignments. so I can create a assignments_users
table. this way I can have assignment 1 shared with user 1 and 2. and
If I log in as user 1 or 2 I see the assignment.

so assignement table has these fields for simplicity
id
name

this is where I have problems thinking.
how do get my session id to save into the assignments_users table with
the id of the new assignment I just created?

old create when saving session id to the assignment table

def create
params[:assignment][“user_id”] = session[:userid]
@assignment= Assignment.new(params[:assignment])
if @assignment.save
flash[:notice] = ‘assignment was successfully created.’
redirect_to :action => ‘index’
else
render :action => ‘new’
end
end

Am I going about this wrong? should I use something else has_many =>
through?
if I put the numbers in the assignments_users everything works fine. I
feel not smart.
–rambling–
i’ve read most of AWDR, I’m half way through ruby for rails (which has
really helped) and googled.
so if there something in the books I’m missing point me to it and I’ll
read.

thanks

john

2

Hi –

On Wed, 26 Jul 2006, John I. wrote:

id
name

this is where I have problems thinking.
how do get my session id to save into the assignments_users table with
the id of the new assignment I just created?

Basically, the HABTM association between users and assignments means
that every user will have an “assignments” collection, and every
assignment will have a “users” collection.

To associate a user with an assignment in your code, you would do
something like this:

@assignment = Assignment.new(params[:assignment])
if @assignment.save
@assignment.users << User.find(session[:userid])

etc.

All you have to do is add a user to the assignment’s users collection.
The rest will happen automatically (assuming you have HABTM and the
assignments_users table set up correctly).

David

–
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[email protected] => me

3

thanks David, that works.
I tried something like that but didn’t have it quite right. I never
tried assigning after the save. D’oh.
I was using this as an example and couldn’t forgure it out.
http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/AccessControlListExample

thanks again.