Question

I have an association with a condition that refers to a different object from the directly loaded object:

it "should point to the same object" do
  user = create(:user)
  user.current_location.should == nil

  user.update_location(latitude: 11, longitude: 22)
  user.current_location.should_not == nil

  location = UserLocation.first

  location.id.should == user.current_location.id
  location.object_id.should == user.current_location.object_id #fails on this line
end

In my mind, both the association and the directly loaded object should be pointing to the same object. Is this expected behavior?

Here is a gist of the important parts of my model:
https://gist.github.com/2635673

Answer 1

This is expected behavior. There is a new feature in rails associations,

:inverse_of

You can set this in the belongs_to and corresponding has_many, then in

user.current_location.users

the occurrence of the user in the current_location.users will be the user object.

But if you get a fresh object from the database, it’s a different object.