Question

If a user has many things and a thing has many stats, it seems like there’s only way Rails-y way to expose the stats through the user.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :things do
    def stats
      Stat.where(thing_id: proxy_association.owner.things_id)
    end
  end
end

class Thing < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  has_many :stats
end

class Stat < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :thing
  has_one :user, through: :thing
end

User.first.things.stats == Stat.where(thing_id: User.first.thing_ids)

I’m trying to determine whether there are any other options… Some people on my team complain that this doesn’t feel natural. I feel like this is the most natural expression of the relationship you could devise.

Does anyone have a better suggestion? I’ll say, I’ve tried instance methods and they don’t smell right.

Answer 1

I might use a has_many :stats, :through => :things in the User class.

Check out this: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/association_basics.html#the-has_many-through-association