Rails - Jan 2006 - Problem with habtm and resulting SQL insert

Cheers,

I have a problem with 1.0 and a habtm relationship between User and Article.

I want to save all articles that users read. I have these models:

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_and_belongs_to_many :read_articles, :class_name =>
"Article",
:join_table => "read_articles"
...
end


class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_and_belongs_to_many :readers, :class_name => "User",
:join_table
=> "read_articles"
...
end

When I do a

a = User.find(1)
b = Article.find(12)

a.read_articles << b

The SQL looks like:

INSERT INTO read_articles (`updated_at`, `id`, `article_id`, `user_id`, 
`created_at`) VALUES (''2005-12-10 23:26:56'', 12, 12, 1,
''2005-12-05
03:44:01'')

The problem is that the `id` field will be set with the article_id. The 
`id` should be set by the database.

The SQL definition of read_articles looks like this:

mysql> describe read_articles;
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type     | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id         | int(11)  |      | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| user_id    | int(11)  |      |     | 0       |                |
| article_id | int(11)  |      |     | 0       |                |
| created_at | datetime | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| updated_at | datetime | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+------------+----------+------+-----+---------+----------------+


Any solutions to my problem?

Thanks,
Jonathan
-- 
Jonathan Weiss
http://blog.innerewut.de

> Any solutions to my problem?
Yes, don''t have an id field in read_articles. It''s just a join
table,
not an entity table. Only entity tables should have ids.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com   -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com   -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com  -- Web-application framework

On 1/9/06, Jonathan Weiss <jw@innerewut.de> wrote:
> INSERT INTO read_articles (`updated_at`, `id`, `article_id`, `user_id`,
> `created_at`) VALUES (''2005-12-10 23:26:56'', 12, 12, 1,
''2005-12-05
> 03:44:01'')
>
> The problem is that the `id` field will be set with the article_id. The
> `id` should be set by the database.
The Allow HABTM Primary Key Plugin fixes this (it''s a one line change
to HasAndBelongsToManyAssociation#insert_record).  See
http://wiki.rubyonrails.com/rails/pages/Plugins.  This is a long
standing issue with Rails (see
http://dev.rubyonrails.org/ticket/1031).  I consider it a major bug,
but I don''t think everyone would agree.

David Heinemeier Hansson wrote:
>> Any solutions to my problem?
> 
> Yes, don''t have an id field in read_articles. It''s just a
join table,
> not an entity table. Only entity tables should have ids.
Ahh, that makes sense :-)

I created this table with a migration and forgot that `id` will be 
created automatically if you do not specify `:id => false`.

Why does ActiveRecord set the id to article.id?


Thanks,
Jonathan




-- 
Jonathan Weiss
http://blog.innerewut.de

> Why does ActiveRecord set the id to article.id?
Actually, it doesn''t, your database determines which id makes it out.
Thing is that Rails is doing a SELECT * FROM which includes all the
columns from both join table and entity table.
--
David Heinemeier Hansson
http://www.loudthinking.com -- Broadcasting Brain
http://www.basecamphq.com   -- Online project management
http://www.backpackit.com   -- Personal information manager
http://www.rubyonrails.com  -- Web-application framework