Rails - Aug 2009 - Newbie Confusion re underscores / camel case

Hi,

I''m a Java and ColdFusion developer trying to find my feet with JRuby
and Rails.

I''ve created a very simple "Auction" app, with a database
schema like
this:

  create_table "auction_items", :force => true do |t|
    t.string   "description"
    t.string   "title"
    t.datetime "start_date"
    t.datetime "end_date"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
  end

  create_table "bids", :force => true do |t|
    t.integer  "auction_item_id"
    t.decimal  "amount",          :precision => 15, :scale => 2
    t.datetime "bid_time"
    t.datetime "created_at"
    t.datetime "updated_at"
  end

There are two classes in my model:

auction_item.rb:

class AuctionItem < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :bids
end

bid.rb:

class Bid < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :auction_item
end

Initially, I had bid.rb like this:

class Bid < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :AuctionItem
end

(ie. using the camel-cased class name, as per the definintion in the
class  rather than the underscored one), but it didn''t work until I
changed it to use the undscored one.

What is the rule here?  Does the name in the "belongs_to" refer to the
table name or something?

Similarly, I''m a bit confused why I have to go to

http://localhost:8080/auction_items (not
http://localhost:8080/AuctionItems).

Can anyone explain the general rules to me, or point me to somewhere
that does please?

Many thanks,
Andrew.
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Hi

   The first parameter to belongs_to is the association id So here 
auction_item_id being the foreign key according to convension by rails 
we can say

belongs_to :auction_item

   It will be taken as auction_item_id For example you can try

t.belongs_to  :auction_item
     instead of
t.integer  "auction_item_id"   in the above migration
    Defintion of belongs_to you can see at

rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/associations.rb, line 1001



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

Andrew Myers wrote:
[...]
> Can anyone explain the general rules to me, or point me to somewhere
> that does please?
Standard Ruby convention (should be explained, at least in part, in the 
Pickaxe Book).  Class names (like all constants) are uppercase. 
Everything else is lowercase.  Unless you are using a literal class name 
(e.g. AuctionItem.find), you probably want lowercase.

The situation with has_many is a little odd, since the symbol isn''t 
directly *anything*: for example, in has_many :auction_items, notice 
that the name is plural.  This is Rails trying to do friendly 
English-like syntax.
> 
> Many thanks,
> Andrew.
Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Andrew Myers wrote:
> 
> Can anyone explain the general rules to me, or point me to somewhere
> that does please?
> 
> Many thanks,
> Andrew.
take a look at:
ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::String::Inflections

best way is to load it up in irb and play with it''s methods or look it 
up on the rails api.. it will end all your confusion guaranteed.

-- 
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