Question

I feel like this is a simple problem I’m having due to my misunderstanding of the new ActiveRecord query interface, but take this example:

>> Category.first.recipes
=> [ ... ] # array of recipes

However:

>> Category.where(:id => 1).recipes
=> NoMethodError: undefined method `recipes' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x000001033dc9e0>

What’s going on here? why does my where method return an ActiveRecord::Relation object? how can I retrieve the objects from the query here?

Answer 1

This is actually intentional.

Category.where(:id => 1)
# Is Equivalent to Category.all(:conditions => {:id => 1}})
Category.where(:id => 1).first
# Is equivalent of Category.first(:conditions => {:id => 1}})

The objects are only retrieved when special methods like first, each etc are called. This is called lazy loading which is a great when you want to cache your views. Read more about why here.