multiple models from one controller.

Hey all,

I am new to Ruby on Rails and need some beyond basics help. I have a the agile web dev with rails 2nd ed. And i have looked at a few tutorials online. However none has covered real life webapps with multiple tables in a DB where some depend on others. let me cut to the chase. I have a app with 3 tables. 2 of the tables are directly related meaning that i can't insert into one with out inserting the corresponding values into the other. now i have figure out with some help from IRC how to do this. but now i have a problem. I need to have validattion on both models before the inserts are made. what is happening is that if validation passes on the 1st, that inserts then the 2nd fails and that doesn't insert. so right there i have a problem. My question is how do i handle such a situation. Thanks for the help

-B

Read up on validates_associated[1]. Also consider:

begin    order = order.new(params[:order])    line_item = table2.new(params[:line_item])    order.line_items << line_item    order.save! rescue    # something went wrong end

This is 'air code' and clearly a simplistic example, but what should
happen here is that you create a new order. orders has an associated
table, line_items (probably a has_many relationship). When you use
save!, an exception is created if there is a problem such as model
validation failure. Because you used validates_associated, this
bubbles failures in the associated item up. When the exception
happens, the transaction block causes a rollback, leaving the
database in its original state. The Rails dox [2] say that "save and
destroy are automatically wrapped in a transaction."

Best to test this in script/console and observe its actual behavior.

Hope this helps.

[1] http://railsmanual.org/module/ ActiveRecord::Validations::ClassMethods/validates_associated [2] http://railsmanual.org/module/ActiveRecord%3A%3ATransactions%3A% 3AClassMethods

i just found exactly what i need on the rails forum and it works great. Check out this link.http://railsforum.com/viewtopic.php?id=717. thanks however for your very quick response.

-B