Question

I have a self referential association like this:

class Influencer < ActiveRecord::Base

 has_many :followers, :class_name => 'Following', :foreign_key => 'influencer_id'
 has_many :following, :class_name => 'Following', :foreign_key => 'follower_id'  

on my influencer table I have a field called “external_identifier”

I want to check my followers for a given external_identifier, so normally I would do an :include so it does a join.

I tried:

myinfluencer.followers.find(:first, :include => 'influencers', :conditions => ["influencers.external_identifier = ?","934394343434"])

but it errors with “influencers” is not an association, I also tried “followers”, neither seem to work properly.

Answer 1

Try :include => :follower.

myinfluencer.followers returns a has_many association, so when you are joining in order to test a condition on the related model (Influencer), you need to use the belongs_to side of the association, which in this case is belongs_to :follower.