Active Record has_one through

I have two tables in my app which I am attempting to relate through a join table. The Artist class which uses 'has_many through', works as expected. However, the Event class using 'has_one through', brings back nil.

class Artist < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :artist_events, dependent: :destroy   has_many :events, through: :artist_events end

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :artist_event   has_one :artist, through: :artist_events end

class ArtistEvent < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :artist   belongs_to :event end

In irb i get all events for an artist with "a.events" (where a = Artist.first). But e.artist returns 'nil'. Whats strange is that a.artist_event returns nill as well. However, when I run a 'find_by' on the artist_event table and use e.id, the artist_event is returned.

I have tried changing the Event class to use has_one as opposed to belongs_to, without effect.

What am I missing? Do I need to have an index in the schema?

I have not done this but I think it should be has_one :artist_event # to match ArtistEvent belongs_to event has_one :artist through: artist_event # note, singular artist_event

However, in this scenario I don't think you need the join table at all, why not just have Artist has_many events Event belongs_to artist

Colin

Something hasn’t been copied correctly here, because this shouldn’t work - the through refers to an association (artist_events) that doesn’t exist on Event.

As noted elsewhere, belongs_to is likely not the right association to use here; it’s expecting an ‘artist_event_id’ column on the ‘events’ table.

You’ll also want to carefully consider if has_one is the right association as well. The table structure you’ve set up (Artist / ArtistEvent / Event) is a classic many-to-many relationship. If an Event can truly only have one artist, this structure is not needed. If an Event can have many artists, than a has_one isn’t correct.

–Matt Jones

why dont you just do this....

class Artist < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :events, dependent: :destroy end

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :artist end

a = Artist.first a.events which will return a list of events connected to that artist

e = Event.first e.artist which will return the artist that is connected to that event.

Maybe explain what your user story is to better understand. With what you posted I comprehended the statement above.

Turns out the event table needed to have an artist_id column. I was attempting to use the join table without a reference to the artist table.

I dont know if that was the fix, because i also wrote a function in the event model that used the artist_id to return artist data from the database.

I did try your suggestion when initially building the classes...but again, without the artist_id in the event table, it failed.

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :city_events, dependent: :destroy

  validates :EventID, uniqueness: true

  def artist     Artist.find(artist_id)   end

  def city     City.find(city_id)   end

end