Question

I have a User model and Interest Model being joined by a join table called Choice (details below). I’m using the HABTM relationship with through since I have an attribute within the join table as well.

User.rb

has_many :choices
has_many :interests, :through => :choices

Interest.rb

has_many :choices
has_many :users, :through => :choices

Choice.rb

belongs_to :user
belongs_to :interest

So the question is how do I add records to this newly created choice table. For example =>

@user = User.find(1)
@interest = Interest.find(1)
?????   Choice << user.id + interest.id + 4(score attribute) ??????

The last part is the part I’m having a problem with..I have these 3 parameters and didn’t how to add them in and what the syntax was?

Answer 1

You have a couple options for adding a choice, but what probably makes the most sense would be to add choices by scoping to the user instance:

Assuming:

@user = User.find(1)
@interest = Interest.find(1)

You could add a choice like so:

@user.choices.create(:interest => @interest, :score => 4)

You could also do something like this in your controller:

def create
  @choice = @user.choices.build(params[:choice])

  if @choice.save
    # saved
  else
    # not saved
  end
end

This assumes your form has fields for choice[:interest_id] and choice[:score]