Rails - Sep 2009 - RESTful has_many :through

Okay, I think I get the concept of a RESTful many-to-many association
controller, but I''ve hit a bit of a wall actually implementing it.
I''ve
been Googling for a while, but this simple question is starting to take
up too much time:

Heres where I am:

I have a Meeting model related to Users through Attendees. Simple enough
so far. I need to be able to create, update and destroy meeting
attendees:

in the controller I, of course have create, update and destroy actions
and the attendees are nested under meetings giving the following route:
POST /meetings/1/attendees (for create action).

def create
  @meeting = Meeting.find(params[:meeting_id]) # actually in
before_filter
  @meeting.users << current_user
  ...
  ...
end

Okay so far, however I also need to set additional attributes on the
Attendee object:

attendee.rsvp = "Yes" # for example

So rather than using << to associate the logged in user directly to the
meeting should I instead create the Attendee model directly set the
attributes and save?

def create
  attendee = Attendee.new(:meeting_id => params[:meeting_id], :user_id
=> current_user.id, rsvp => params[:rsvp])
  if attendee.save
    ...
  else
    ...
  end
end

Or am I way off base and there''s a smart and simple way to accomplish
this?
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Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Have a look at has_many :through...

I would see this to be a meeting has_many :users :through attenders/
attendees or maybe attendance

heimdull wrote:
> Have a look at has_many :through...
> 
> I would see this to be a meeting has_many :users :through attenders/
> attendees or maybe attendance
The model I understand and that all works fine. I actually have it 
modeled like so:

class Meeting < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :attendees, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many :users, :through => :attendees
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :attendances, :class_name => "Attendee", :dependent
=>
:destroy
  has_many :meetings, :through => : attendances
end

class Attendee < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :meeting
  belongs_to :user
end

It''s the controller create and update methods that are tripping me up.
I
was just trying to find out how the "experts" handled many-to-many 
associations in controllers. I actually end up using something like 
this:

class AttendeesController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :require_login
  before_filter :load_meeting

  def create
    @attendee = Attendee.new(:meeting_id => @meeting.id, :user_id => 
current_user.id, :rsvp => params[:rsvp])
    ...
  end

  protected
  def load_meeting
    @meeting = Meeting.find(params[:meeting_id])
  end
end

I''m guessing that''s the most straight forward way to do this?
I''m not
exactly sure if setting the foreign keys directly like that is best 
practice, but it I haven''t figured out a clean way to handle this using
the associations.

Adding the user to the meeting would create the association 
(@meeting.users << current_user), but then I wouldn''t have access
to the
attendee object in order to set the extra "rsvp" attribute.
I''d have to
go back and fetch it something like @attendee = 
@meeting.attendees.find_by_user_id(current_user.id).

So this is why I was hoping to get some insight from the community.
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