Hello, I just stumbled upon a behaviour about associations I do not really understand why Rails/ActiveRecord cannot get the connection. Using activerecord (4.2.0.beta2). To describe it, lets work with theses models: class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :project_participations has_many :projects, through: :project_participations, inverse_of: :users end class ProjectParticipation < ActiveRecord::Base belongs_to :user belongs_to :project enum role: { member: 0, manager: 1 } end class Project < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :project_participations has_many :users, through: :project_participations, inverse_of: :projects end A user can participate in many projects with a role as a member or a manager. The connecting model is called ProjectParticipation. I now have a problem using the associations on unsaved objects. The following commands work like I think they should work: # first example u = User.new p = Project.new u.projects << p u.projects => #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy [#<Project id: nil>]> u.project_participations => #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy [#<ProjectParticipation id: nil, user_id: nil, project_id: nil, role: nil>]> So far so good - AR created the ProjectParticipation by itself and I can access the projects of a user with u.projects. But it does not work if I create the ProjectParticipation by myself: # second example u = User.new pp = ProjectParticipation.new p = Project.new pp.project = p # assign project to project_participation u.project_participations << pp # assign project_participation to user u.project_participations => #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy [#<ProjectParticipation id: nil, user_id: nil, project_id: nil, role: nil>]> u.projects => #<ActiveRecord::Associations::CollectionProxy []> Why are the projects empty? I cannot access the projects by u.projects like before, even the ProjectParticipation is there. But if I go through the participations directly, the project shows up: u.project_participations.map(&:project) => [#<Project id: nil>] Shouldn't it work like the first example directly: u.projects returning me all projects not depending on whether I create the join object by myself or not? Or how can I make AR aware of this? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/rubyonrails-talk/9ba0fd80-2b12-43a2-8c85-fc8eb2a6be16%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.