Question

I have 2 models in my Rails 3 app which I use to describe people and where they live
Unfortunately I set these up without using associations

The 2 tables are setup like this

People
 id
 name
 location_id

Locations
  id
  name

what I want to do is list all entries in the Peoples table ordered by Locations.name alphabetically and People.name alphabetically

I can do a simple sort using this code which groups each person by a location but I need to drill into the Locations table as well

@people = People.all(:order => '"location_id" ASC, "name" ASC')

Anyone have any idea?

Also is it a good idea to set up an association in the People class to say location_id is Locations.id

Answer 1

Add

belongs_to :location

To the People class

Then you can query the following way:

@people = People.joins(:location).order("locations.name ASC, people.name ASC")