Rails - May 2006 - Possible bug: ActiveRecord::Base::has_many fails for String arguments.

Hi

I''ve noticed ActiveRecord::Base::has_many fails for String arguments.
The following code works when all arguments to the
ActiveRecord::Base::has_many calls are Symbols:

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :country_products, :dependent => true
  has_many :products, :through => :country_products
end

ruby script/console
>> Country.find_all.first.products
[#<Product:0x313f4d8 @attributes={"name"=>"pencil",
"id"=>"1"}>]

But once we change some of them to Strings the same code fails mysteriously:

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many "country_products", :dependent => true
  has_many :products, :through => :country_products
end
>> Country.find_all.first.products
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughAssociationNotFoundError:
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughAssociationNotFoundError

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :country_products, :dependent => true
  has_many "products", :through => :country_products
end
>> Country.find_all.first.products
NoMethodError: undefined method `id2name'' for
"products":String

class Country < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :country_products, :dependent => true
  has_many :products, :through => "country_products"
end
>> Country.find_all.first.products
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughAssociationNotFoundError:
ActiveRecord::HasManyThroughAssociationNotFoundError

This situation is - at best - very confusing. Rails seems to be
completely liberal about getting Strings instead of Symbols in other
places. And even if there would be a decision to make Rails less
promiscuous in this regard - which isn''t necessarily a bad thing - it
should do a better job at informing the developer. Especially since
this strictness is inconcistent with the rest of the framework. Notice
how mysterious the error messages we got - and that we got two
completely different errors for what is essentially the same problem.

Anyone has a different take on this?  I''m planning to file this as a
bug.

-- 
-Alder