Rails - Jan 2006 - newbie: access model inside a model

Hi everybody,

I''ve started to learn Ruby on Rails with the two books, of course
I''m
experimenting outside
the examples in the book and walking against some things I didn''t learn
yet. so here''s the question:

Is it possible to access one model from within another? Actually I have 
a Many to Many relationship
between tables and I''m trying to realize this without 
"has_and_belongs_to_many".

Maybe someone can push me in the right direction.

Kind regards,
Jeroen van Doorn

Jeroen van Doorn wrote:
> a Many to Many relationship
> between tables and I''m trying to realize this without
> "has_and_belongs_to_many".
Why do you want to avoid has_and_belongs_to_many?  It''s going to make 
things a lot easier for you.

But the answer to your question is yes, there''s nothing preventing one 
model from talking to another.  Each class that derives from 
ActiveRecord::Base gets a slew of class methods that can be called both 
internally and externally, like find() and find_by_sql().

Look at find(:first) and find(:all) to get started.  For example,

class Hockey < ActiveRecord::Base
...
end

class Baseball < ActiveRecord::Base

def hello
  Hockey.find(:first, :conditions => "team_id = 10")
end

end

b = Baseball.new
b.hello # will find a hockey team

But still, you really should learn about has_and_belongs_to_many in most 
cases.

Jeff
www.softiesonrails.com


-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Jeff Cohen wrote:
> Jeroen van Doorn wrote:
>   
>> a Many to Many relationship
>> between tables and I''m trying to realize this without
>> "has_and_belongs_to_many".
>>     
>
> Why do you want to avoid has_and_belongs_to_many?  It''s going to
make
> things a lot easier for you.
>
> But the answer to your question is yes, there''s nothing preventing
one
> model from talking to another.  Each class that derives from 
> ActiveRecord::Base gets a slew of class methods that can be called both 
> internally and externally, like find() and find_by_sql().
>
> Look at find(:first) and find(:all) to get started.  For example,
>
> class Hockey < ActiveRecord::Base
> ...
> end
>
> class Baseball < ActiveRecord::Base
>
> def hello
>   Hockey.find(:first, :conditions => "team_id = 10")
> end
>
> end
>
> b = Baseball.new
> b.hello # will find a hockey team
>
> But still, you really should learn about has_and_belongs_to_many in most 
> cases.
>
> Jeff
> www.softiesonrails.com
>
>
>   
Hi Jeff,

I really don''t have a good reason to avoid it, just trying to learn and
understand!
Wil use has_and_belongs_to_many in the future.

Thanks for the help,
Jeroen