How to create a method such as: @user.travels.register(.)

rubyonrails-talk
1

Hi,

In order to trim my controllers down and keep the code in the correct place, I am trying to refactor:

@user.travels.create(:name => ..., :date => ..., :ip => request...., etc)

to:

@user.travels.register(params, request)

So my questions are:

1) is create() an instance method of Travel? I have doubts, since Travel.create is a class method.

2) how to write my register method() so that it behaves like create()?

Thanks for your help.

2

Hi,

In order to trim my controllers down and keep the code in the correct place, I am trying to refactor:

@user.travels.create(:name => ..., :date => ..., :ip => request...., etc)

to:

@user.travels.register(params, request)

So my questions are:

1) is create() an instance method of Travel? I have doubts, since Travel.create is a class method.

it's not. It's a method on the association proxy

2) how to write my register method() so that it behaves like create()?

There are 2 possible ways to go.

The first is the associations are scopes: if you have a class method on Travel called foo, then user.travels.foo calls the foo class method but active record calls will be scoped to the travels for that user.

The second is association extensions. If you do

has_many :foos do   def bar   end end

then you will be able to call user.foos.bar. There's some more info here: ActiveRecord::Associations::ClassMethods

Fred

3

Thank you Frederick. I now know where and what to look for.