Question

I have a simple has_one/belongs_to relationship between two models.

This is a new association in my application so there are many records that do not yet have the associated record created.

Throughout my application I’m assuming the model has the association and I’m accessing its attributes and methods. However, because the association doesn’t exist, I’m running into a lot of errors.

What I would like to do is unobtrusively build the associated record on the fly whenever it’s access for the first time through any of its methods and attributes. It does not matter that there is data in record, I simply need it to exist so those methods I’m calling can build the data.

Edit: I do not want to check and create the record on all of the instances where I’m trying to access the relationship, so idealy this needs to be done on the model itself and not in my controllers anywhere.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Here’s what we ended up with that did the trick. I didn’t write it (a co-worker did) but it passes the previously failing tests that I wrote for this case.

def stats_with_create
  stats_without_create || create_stats
end
alias_method_chain :stats, :create