If anyone has read the book, Sitepoint "Simply Rails 2 " book. then... here is my mind breaking q: Page 331 --------- Join Model Relationship: He has User Model, Story Model and Votes Model in the sample scenario which he is walking through in this book. User can write many stories. So, User :has_many relationships to Storries. USer can vote to many stories. So, User :has_many Votes to Stories. Vote :belongs_to Stories What I don''t get is: Why should he add this join model Relationship? I understand he is trying to explain the different relationships, etc. etc. But, in this case, what would it lack, if the Join Model relationship is not set in the User Model ? (Atleast in this case) Here is the excerpt from the book: Page 331: --------------------------------------------- Introducing the has_many :through Association The code that implements a join model relationship is the line has_many :through. Let’s use it to add a join model relationship to our User model. Open the file app/models/user.rb and make the changes in bold below: 22-user .rb (excerpt) class User < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :stories has_many :votes has_many :stories_voted_on, :through => :votes, :source => :story end Normally, Rails is smart enough to figure out associated class names on its own, so long as the associations are given a name that matches the plural form of the class name (for instance, :stories). However, because our User model already has a has_manyrelationship (has_many :stories), we need to assign this new association a different name (:stories_voted_on). We also need to specify the model with which we’re associating the users, which is exactly what the :source => :story argument does. --------------------------------- If any is not clear, please let me know. - thanks, radha -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Ruby on Rails: Talk" group. To post to this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFF+G/Ez6ZCGd0@public.gmane.org To unsubscribe from this group, send email to rubyonrails-talk+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk?hl=en.