How to refactor to use 'acts_as_tree'?

rubyonrails-talk
1

I am trying to refactor my code to use 'acts_as_tree'.

I have a self-referencing model called Property (<ActiveRecord) which currently has the usual belongs_to and has_many declarations:

belongs_to :collection,              :class_name => "Property",              :foreign_key => "collection_id"   has_many :collected_properties,              :class_name => "Property",              :foreign_key => "collection_id"

I'd like to replace these with an 'acts_as_tree'.

In my controller 'create' method currently I have the following code:

   # create a new Property of the correct sub class    @property = Property.factory(params[:which_type], params[:property])     # if adding a child to a root - not always the case!     if @flash[:is_collection] then       # this finds the immediate root (root id stored in flash)       root=PropertyCollection.find(@flash[:collection_id])       # this updates the foreign key collection_id in my new child row       @property.collection = root     end     # save the new row     if @property.save       flash[:notice] = 'Property was successfully created.'       redirect_to :action => 'list'     else       render(:partial => params[:controller]+"/"+params[:picklist][:pick])     end   end

How would I refactor the @propery.collection = root and @property.save lines to make use of 'acts_as_tree'. I note that in the Agile Web Dev with Rails book that you can write:

root.children.create(...) but not sure how to change this to make use of the save() and my instance variable @property

Thanks, Lee.

2

fyi, I added 'acts_as_tree' and just changed '@property.collection = root' to '@property.parent = root' - works fine I expect benefits when writing the code to render the list as I can use 'children'/'parent' etc methods now :slight_smile:

Suggestions for improvement still welcome of course.