# Rails bug? Conditions on associations ignored by eager loadi

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 31, 2006, 5:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242 "2006-01-31T05:08:17Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 5:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242/1 "2006-01-31T05:08:17Z")

</div>

I’m looking for someone to confirm the following as a bug in Rails  
1.0 before I post it to Trac.

If I use eager loading on an association that has conditions defined,  
the conditions are ignored.

The following example illustrates the problem. I have two tables:

create\_table “blogs”, :force =\> true do |t|  
t.column “name”, :string  
end

create\_table “posts”, :force =\> true do |t|  
t.column “blog\_id”, :integer  
t.column “subject”, :string  
t.column “published”, :boolean  
end

The model for blogs looks like this:

class Blog \< ActiveRecord::Base  
has\_many :posts  
has\_many :published\_posts, :class\_name =\> ‘Post’, :foreign\_key  
=\> ‘blog\_id’, :conditions =\> ‘published = 1’  
end

Now add some sample data for blogs:

example:  
id: 1  
name: Example

and for posts:

published:  
id: 1  
blog\_id: 1  
subject: Published  
published: 1

unpublished:  
id: 2  
blog\_id: 1  
subject: Unpublished  
published: 0

The problem is that:

Blog.find(:all, :include =\> :published\_posts).first.published\_posts

returns all the posts for the blog, not just the published ones. The  
SQL generated looks like this:

SELECT posts.`id` AS t1\_r0, posts.`blog_id` AS t1\_r1,  
blogs.`id` AS t0\_r0, posts.`subject` AS t1\_r2,  
blogs.`name` AS t0\_r1, posts.`content` AS t1\_r3,  
posts.`published` AS t1\_r4  
FROM blogs LEFT OUTER JOIN posts ON posts.blog\_id = blogs.id

The following, on the other hand, returns just the posts marked as  
published:

Blog.find(:all).first.published\_posts

If anyone wants a simple sample project to test this, let me know and  
I’ll tar up my example.

Cheers,

Pete Y.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 5:56am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242/2 "2006-01-31T05:56:43Z")

</div>

On 1/30/06, Pete Y. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> I’m looking for someone to confirm the following as a bug in Rails  
> 1.0 before I post it to Trac.
> 
> If I use eager loading on an association that has conditions defined,  
> the conditions are ignored.

This bug has been around for quite a long time. If you look at  
ActiveRecord::Associations::ClassMethods#association\_join you’ll see  
that it doesn’t add the reflection conditions when it joins the tables  
(which it would need to do to properly load the eager associations).  
FWIW, the patch in ticket 1562 fixes this (and some other long  
standing bugs/limitations), and should apply cleanly to 1.0 (though  
probably not Edge Rails).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 8:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242/3 "2006-01-31T08:29:44Z")

</div>

On 1/30/06, Pete Y. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> Thanks, Jeremy. Looks like that path addresses one of my other most  
> hated issues: the inability to use eager loading on two associations  
> that reference the same table.
> 
> Given this patch isn’t applicable to edge rails due to major internal  
> reworking of ActiveRecord, any idea what’s happening with this  
> functionality for rails 1.1? I don’t really want to commit my code to  
> depending on the patch, given that I’m looking forward to being able  
> to use :through on associations in the near future.

You’d have to ask the Rails core team. They closed the ticket with a  
wontfix, because another patch merged it (2172), and then that patch  
has languished as an XPATCH, with the author stating it needs a  
complete rewrite. The patch in ticket 1562 isn’t perfect but does  
work and passes every test but one. I’d like to refactor it so it you  
could manually specify the alias name to use when eager loading, which  
would fix the main problem with it (it aliases all tables even if it  
isn’t necessary). But it’s not going to be worth it unless the core  
team plans on applying it.

> Assuming I’m not using the patch, is there a way to work around the  
> issue? Simply applying the condition again as a :conditions argument  
> to find won’t work, because the condition needs to be applied to the  
> association rather than the where clause of the whole query.

I converted the patch to a plugin, the details are on the wiki  
([http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Allow+Multiple+Associations+Same+Table+Plugin](http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Allow+Multiple+Associations+Same+Table+Plugin)).

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\
**Post date:** [January 31, 2006, 6:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242/4 "2006-01-31T06:30:06Z")

</div>

Thanks, Jeremy. Looks like that path addresses one of my other most  
hated issues: the inability to use eager loading on two associations  
that reference the same table.

Given this patch isn’t applicable to edge rails due to major internal  
reworking of ActiveRecord, any idea what’s happening with this  
functionality for rails 1.1? I don’t really want to commit my code to  
depending on the patch, given that I’m looking forward to being able  
to use :through on associations in the near future.

Assuming I’m not using the patch, is there a way to work around the  
issue? Simply applying the condition again as a :conditions argument  
to find won’t work, because the condition needs to be applied to the  
association rather than the where clause of the whole query.

Cheers,

Pete Y.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@pete](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/pete)\
**Post date:** [February 1, 2006, 1:58am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rails-bug-conditions-on-associations-ignored-by-eager-loadi/99242/5 "2006-02-01T01:58:17Z")

</div>

Thanks again, Jeremy. The plugin works a treat, and saves me mucking  
around with freezing my app to Rails 1.0, patching, etc.

I might post something on the rails core list about the status of  
these things for Rails 1.1.

Cheers,

Pete Y.