I have a User class that is associated with Contact through UserContact.
class User has_many :user_contacts has_many :contacts, :through => :user_contacts, :source => :contact, :order => 'contacts.last_name ASC' end
UserContact defines a many-to-many relationship with attributes. The problem I have is how to best access the attributes in UserContact without constantly accessing the database. For example:
contacts = user.contacts contacts.each do |contact| # Do stuff with contact # How do I access the UserContact instance that through used to access the contact? end
I could do
uc = user.user_contacts.find_by_contact_id(contact.id)
but that results in another database call for each contact.
I suppose I could do something like: user_contacts = user.user_contacts.find(:all, :include => :contact, :order => 'contacts.last_name ASC') user_contacts.each do |uc| puts uc.contact.last_name puts uc.attribute_name end
I was hoping there might be another way to work :through backwards from the target. The above will work, but it is not as clean as the :through relationship.