Rails - Feb 2009 - Sorting objects without an explicit find function...?

Hello -

I''m kind of new to Rails, and although I can usually google the answer
to whatever problem I''m having, I''m just not sure how to
phrase this, so
I come to you all for help.

I''m building an educational app, which (among other things) administers
multiple-choice tests to students. I''m staying RESTful, so Test
has_many
Questions and Question has_many Answers. I started by scaffolding those
three, then scrapped all the Question and Answer views. They''re
included
in the Test "show" view, which looks roughly like this:

---

<% for question in @test.questions %>

(question text)

<% for answer in question.answers %>

(text for each answer choice)

<% end %>

<% end %>

---

So, I''ve gotten that to work just fine. Now I''m trying to make
both the
questions and answers each drag-and-drop sortable, so that questions in
a test can be rearranged, and answers in a question rearranged (the
latter seems unnecessary and kind of difficult, but I''m trying to work
it out in order to challenge myself). I''m following Railscast #147 for
this.

So I have almost everything set up - I''ve added the
"position" integer
to the questions and answers, and the sort function that updates their
positions in the database after the drag-and-drop is complete. I''ve
confirmed that those are working.

My problem is that when I''m displaying questions and answers, I
don''t
know how to make Rails order them using their positions. On a hunch, I
tried changing the view to look like:

<% for question in @test.questions(:order => "position") %>
...
<% for answer in question.answers(:order => "position") %>
...

That doesn''t give an error, but it doesn''t work either. So,
I''m kind of
at a loss about how to do this. I could do it the way the Railscast does
it, and go into the Test controller and Show action and make:

@questions = Question.all(:order => "position")

And change the view accordingly, but I wouldn''t be able to fix the
answers the same way. There must be some kind of Rails Way that I''m
missing? Or some bit of syntax?

Thoughts? Thank you!
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On Feb 17, 6:47 am, Chris Hanks
<rails-mailing-l...-ARtvInVfO7ksV2N9l4h3zg@public.gmane.org>
wrote:
> That doesn''t give an error, but it doesn''t work either.
So, I''m kind of
> at a loss about how to do this. I could do it the way the Railscast does
> it, and go into the Test controller and Show action and make:
>
> @questions = Question.all(:order => "position")
>
> And change the view accordingly, but I wouldn''t be able to fix the
> answers the same way. There must be some kind of Rails Way that
I''m
> missing? Or some bit of syntax?
>
well you can do question.answers.find(...) if you want, that find will
be scoped to the association. or you can add the condition to the
association itself, ie

class Question
  has_many :answers, :order => ''position''
end

Fred
> Thoughts? Thank you!
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.
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Ah, that did it. Thank you!
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