# Quick and easy has\_many routes question **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [April 8, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500 "2010-04-08T02:33:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 2:33am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/1 "2010-04-08T02:33:32Z")
Hey, i have- map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> :pages now what if i wanted for courses to has\_many =\> :forums as well? can i just do map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> :pages, :forums ?? because that doesn’t work. whats the syntax for- has many blank AND blank… lol reall noobie i know, but i just don’t know how to do it. ---
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 10:06am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/2 "2010-04-08T10:06:38Z")
Have you tried? map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> [:pages, :forums] ---
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 3:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/3 "2010-04-08T15:00:33Z")
oh the brackets. thanks guys. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 9:37am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/4 "2010-04-08T09:37:56Z")
> i have- map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> :pages > > now what if i wanted for courses to has\_many =\> :forums as well? > > can i just do map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> :pages, :forums Nope, it would be: map.resources :courses, :has\_many =\> [:pages, :forums] You map it to an array. In Ruby any hash style assignments in a method call, which this is, but must come at the end to be implicitly converted to a hash. In the initial example you are doing this: map.resources(:courses, {:has\_many =\> :pages}) And that works just as well as the normal version, but it’s not as readable. If you did it your way, Ruby wouldn’t be able to make the last arguments a hash as you have just a key as the last argument (your :forums looks like an additional argument to map.resources not a part of :has\_many). Anyway, answered in the first line of code, hopefully the rest may make it slightly clearer. Cheers, Andy ---
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2010, 11:09pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/5 "2010-04-09T23:09:30Z")
oh yeah then what if i wanted– a has many b, and b has many c, and c has many d how would i do that in a route? like multiple stacked layers, how would i write that in my routes.rb? ---
**Author:** ![davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/f0a364/32.png) [@davidz101](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/davidz101)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2010, 5:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/quick-and-easy-has-many-routes-question/186500/6 "2010-04-08T17:19:21Z")
when I have more than one nested ‘has\_many’ resource, i think about creating a namespace… [http://seanbehan.com/ruby-on-rails/nesting-resources-in-rails-routes-rb-with-namespaces/](http://seanbehan.com/ruby-on-rails/nesting-resources-in-rails-routes-rb-with-namespaces/) …this keeps your other controllers (forums, pages) clean and restful