Why must I save/reload to get grandchildren in STI?

I have the following models:

Person < ActiveRecord::Base end

Contact < Person belongs_to :company end

Primarycontact < Contact belongs_to :company end

Company < ActiveRecord::Base has_many :contacts has_one :primarycontact end

I have already saved these objects in the database, verified in mysql client: (pseudocode)

a => company joe => primarycontact

When I try to access them this way:

joe.name => 'joe' #yep, that's right a.primarycontact => joe #good, that's what I expect a.contacts.each {|c| puts c.name} => nil #why? a.save => true a.contacts(:reload => true).each {|c| puts c.name} => 'joe' #huh?

Now I can shut down the console, start it up again, and do the whole dance again from the top. Why to I have to save / reload every time I want to get at grandchildren? It's not as though I'm actually altering the data in the database. It seems very inefficient.

Any ideas or help you may have would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks, Eric

I found the solution.

By adding model declarations in application.rb, rails became aware of the grandchild class Primarycontact from the start, and everything works fine. ( e.g. model :primarycontact )

My little save /reload dance just tipped rails off that the class existed so that it could load it's definition. Explicitly loading the definition in application.rb solves the problem.

Eric пишет:

I found the solution.

By adding model declarations in application.rb, rails became aware of the grandchild class Primarycontact from the start, and everything works fine. ( e.g. model :primarycontact )

My little save /reload dance just tipped rails off that the class existed so that it could load it's definition. Explicitly loading the definition in application.rb solves the problem.   

Yeah, that's the problem with STI in development environment. On every request all reloadable classes are removed and loaded only on demand. So STI children and grandchildren could not be loaded on next request. Maybe, explicitly loading all models would solve this:

app/controllers/application.rb Dir[RAILS_ROOT+'/app/models/*.rb'].each { |f| require f }