Associations Problem

Hi guys, I'm having a strange error in one of my model relationships and it's driving me crazy

I have: class Target < ActiveRecord::Base   has_many :sections end

class Section < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :target   has_many :line_items end

class LineItem < ActiveRecord::Base   belongs_to :section end

When I do the following in script/console: s = LineItem.last.section (s.id is 21, as is LineItem.last.section_id as well) s.target

I get the Section instance, and the logger shows no query to the targets table. However, if I do: s = Section.find(21) s.target

I get the right Target instance.

Even more strange is that if I do: s = LineItem.last.section s.target.target (twice the target message)

I get the right Target instance.

I'm using Rails 2.3.5 and I'm getting this warning, but I'm not sure if it has something to do with it: vendor/rails/activerecord/lib/active_record/associations/association_proxy.rb:217: warning: default `to_a' will be obsolete

Any clue?

Thanx a lot in advance.

When I do the following in script/console: s = LineItem.last.section (s.id is 21, as is LineItem.last.section_id as well) s.target

I get the Section instance, and the logger shows no query to the targets table. However, if I do: s = Section.find(21) s.target

I get the right Target instance.

Even more strange is that if I do: s = LineItem.last.section s.target.target (twice the target message)

I get the right Target instance.

If you do some_line_item.section what you get back isn't a section but an association proxy. If you do anything that actually requires the section object, active record will load it and send the method calls to it. Unfortunately for you the method on association proxy that returns the actual object for the association is called target.

Fred

See http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ReservedWords for more words you can't use.

Colin

When I do the following in script/console: s = LineItem.last.section (s.id is 21, as is LineItem.last.section_id as well) s.target

I get the Section instance, and the logger shows no query to the targets table. However, if I do: s = Section.find(21) s.target

I get the right Target instance.

Even more strange is that if I do: s = LineItem.last.section s.target.target (twice the target message)

I get the right Target instance.

If you do some_line_item.section what you get back isn't a section but an association proxy. If you do anything that actually requires the section object, active record will load it and send the method calls to it. Unfortunately for you the method on association proxy that returns the actual object for the association is called target.

Thanks a lot, Frederick. Just the words I needed.

See http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/ReservedWords for more words you can't use.

Thanks Colin!, great tip! I didn't know this.