Question

I’m a RoR beginner, and I have a problem with my “app”.

I have a table called ” annonces ” and a table called ” marques “.
(It’s like “post” and “category”, for a blog app)

I’m following the screencast #228 of railscasts, but when I want to sort
the “Marque” column, it sort by ID and not by name…

So the question is, how do I do a sortable table column, with multiple
table?

It’s more “click on a header to sort by that attribute”.

For example, if you click on the name of the column (Marque) this should
sort alphabetical ASC and DESC: AUDI – BMW – VOLKSWAGEN / Re-click :
VOLKSWAGEN – BMW – AUDI.

But for the moment, Rails sort me like this (ID) : 1 – 2 – 3 // 3 – 2 – 1. That render this : VOLKSWAGEN – AUDI – BMW // BMW – AUDI / VOLKSWAGEN.

Like I said, I’m following this screencast :
http://railscasts.com/episodes/228-sortable-table-columns

You can see on this page a thumbail of the result.

But in my case, it’s with multiple table ( Marque, Modele, Energie…)

The screencast work perfectly when everything is in the same table.

But I want to do it with content from other table.

In my annonce_controller :

  helper_method :sort_column, :sort_direction
  def index
    @annonces = Annonce.order(sort_column + " " + sort_direction)
    @modeles = Modele.all
    @marques = Marque.order(sort_column + " " + sort_direction)
    @energies = Energy.all

  end
...
...
 private

  def sort_column
  Annonce.column_names.include?(params[:sort]) ? params[:sort] : 
"marque_id"
  end

  def sort_direction
    %w[asc desc].include?(params[:direction]) ? params[:direction] : 
"asc"
  end
end

For the ” def index ” I tried :

    @annonces = Annonce.order(sort_column + " " + sort_direction)
    @marques = Marque.all

and

@annonces = Annonce.find(params[:id])
@marques = Marque.order(sort_column + " " + sort_direction)

In my marque_controller :

class MarquesController < ApplicationController
  helper_method :sort_column, :sort_direction

  def index
    @marques = Marque.order(sort_column + " " + sort_direction)
  end
...
...
  private

  def sort_column
    Marque.column_names.include?(params[:sort]) ? params[:sort] : 
"marque"
  end

  def sort_direction
    %w[asc desc].include?(params[:direction]) ? params[:direction] : 
"asc"
  end
end

the annonce.rb model :

class Annonce < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :marque_id, :modele_id, :price, :type, :energy_id, 
:power
  belongs_to :marque
  belongs_to :modele
  belongs_to :energy
end

the marque.rb model :

class Marque < ActiveRecord::Base
  attr_accessible :marque
  has_many :modeles
  has_many :annonces
end

The view : annonce : index.html.erb

<table>
  <tr>
  <th><%= sortable "marque_id" %></th>
    <th><%= sortable "modele_id" %></th>
    <th><%= sortable "price" %></th>
    <th><%= sortable "power" %></th>
    <th><%= link_to "Energy", :sort => "energy_id" %></th>


<% for annonce in @annonces %>
  <tr>
    <td><%= annonce.marque.marque %></td>
    <td><%= annonce.modele.try(:modele) %></td>
    <td align="right"><%= annonce.price %> €</td>
    <td align="right"><%= annonce.power %></td>
    <td><%= annonce.energy.try(:energy) %></td>
  </tr>
<% end %>
</table>

The view of marque look like this.

My tables looks like that :

Annonces:

    create_table :annonces do |t|
      t.integer :marque_id
      t.integer :modele_id
      t.string :price
      t.string :power
      t.string :energy

Marque:

    create_table :marques do |t|
      t.string :marque

      t.timestamps

I hope this will help…

I’d create all this by doing : rails g scaffold marque marque:string
Or : rails g scaffold annonce marque_id:integer […]

Thanks!

++++

Answer 1

Thanks to Ryan, from RailsCasts who “point me into the right direction” 😉

In my annonces_controller:

 def index
@annonces = Annonce.joins(:marque, :modele, :energy).order(sort_column + "  " + sort_direction)
@modeles = Modele.all
@marques = Marque.all
@energies = Energy.all

end

And I replaced this in the private section :

  private

  def sort_column
    params[:sort] || "marque" && "modele" && "energy"
  end

Thanks!