Question

I have two models

• absence: amount, staff_id
• staff: id, leave_balance

inside the absence model I want to edit the staff member which has their id inside staff_id and then I want to change their leave_balance but I do not know how to access that attribute in the staff model according to the staff_id in the current model using my method in absence

Answer 1

First have a look at the extensive Rails Guide to Active Record Associations to understand the concept.

Then you can do this:

Staff.rb

class Staff < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_one :absence # or has_many :absence
end

Absence.rb

class Absence < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :staff
end

Now you can access the attribute by, let’s say, Absence.first.staff.leave_balance -= 1 or within an instance method in the Absence model self.staff.leave_balance = ...