I found that if I do something like (on MySQL):
File.all(:conditions => {'files.deleted' => false, 'assets.deleted' => false}, :include => :assets)
will only return Files which have at least 1 assets associated with it. If i removed the assets.deleted = 0 condition, then it returns all Files, and their assets (if any); which is how I expected things to behave.
now I can do something like:
File.all(:conditions => 'files.deleted AND (assets.file_id IS NULL OR assets.deleted = 0)', :include => :assets)
And it will return all Files, and their assets (if any)...but righting a query like this every time I do an include (i.e. almost all my tables has a deleted bit) seems a bit cumbersome, as I prefer the hash conditions over the string version.
Is there any way around this? Thanks
Not really. When an include is done in a single query conditions apply to all rows, which makes unobvious things like your first example happen. You might be able to craft a named scope to alleviate the typing work.
Fred