Rails - Jul 2005 - will update_attributes ever handle associated objects automatically?

Apologies for the repetition in different language of a request I made on the
comp.lang.ruby newsgroup.

ActiveRecord::Base  method "update_attributes" takes parameter
"attributes" - a
hash like {"name"=>"value",....}
and updates the object accordingly, ie it finds the record in the table that the
object refers to,  and runs an update query.  What I would like
update_attributes to do is to deal with the updating of associated objects.  I
imagine that the parameter would then look something like
{"name"=>"value",....,
 "child_object"=>{324=>{"name"=>"value",....}},
 "many_objects"=>{12=>{"name"=>"value",....},15=>{"name"=>"value",..}},..
}

where the "child_object" is an object associated via a belongs_to or
has_one
relationship, and the hash of "many_related_objects" is a collection
of objects
associated via a has_many relationship.

update_attributes would then do the right thing with all of this - find all the
related records in other tables and update them.

Without this the ORM feels distinctly lacking to me.

BTW, I love Ruby on Rails!  I''m transferring my project
"FreeMIS" from PHP/MySql
to RoR, and keep getting those "I can''t believe I just did that so
quickly"
moments :)

--

Robert Jones

FreeMIS - http://project.freemis.net