Question

I have 3 models: User, School, and Applicant.

A user has_many :schools, a school has_many :applicants and belongs_to :user, and an applicant belongs_to :school.

I’d like to be able to list applicants that belong to any school that belongs to a particular user. I thought I should be able to do it with

current_user.schools.applicants.paginate(page: params[:page])

That is not working as it is giving this error:

undefined method `applicants' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x007fb9da274110>

How can I access these applicants?

Answer 1

You cannot chain has_many associations like that. Create a has_many :through association on the user model:

# app/models/user.rb
has_many :applicants, :through => :schools

Then you can call

current_user.applicants.paginate(page: params[:page])

From the guide on ActiveRecord associations:

The has_many :through association is also useful for setting up “shortcuts” through nested has_many associations. […]