Question

Consider this code:

class Sheet
    has_many :songs
end

class Song
    belongs_to :sheet
end

sheet = Sheet.find(1)
sheet.songs << Song.find(5)
sheet.songs << Song.find(10)
sheet.songs << Song.find(8)

Now the problem here is that when I run the code below, it returns me a list of songs for that sheet BUT they are not in the same order I added them in (5,10,8). It actually gives me the songs ordered by name.

songs = Sheet.find(1).songs

How can I keep the initial order of the songs?

Answer 1

In order to have a default order, you can do a few things.

Option a)

class Sheet
    has_many :songs, :order => 'songs.id DESC'
end

Options b)

class Song
    belongs_to :sheet
    default_scope :order => 'songs.id DESC'
end

I would not suggest doing default scope as it tends to cause issues with more associations.

---

Sorry, I think I read that wrong. If you ment keep the order to which it was added to the Sheet model, you would need a pivot table of some nature — creating a has_many :through

It would turn into a:

class Sheet
    has_many :songs, :through => :sheet_songs, :order => 'sheet_songs.created_at DESC'
end