Question

Setup

For this question, I’ll use the following three classes:

class SolarSystem < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :planets

  scope :has_earthlike_planet, joins(:planets).merge(Planet.like_earth)
end

class Planet < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :solar_system
  belongs_to :planet_type

  scope :like_earth, joins(:planet_type).where(:planet_types => {:life => true, :gravity => 9.8})
end

class PlanetType < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :planets

  attr_accessible :gravity, :life
end

Problem

The scope has_earthlike_planet does not work. It gives me the following error:

ActiveRecord::ConfigurationError: Association named ‘planet_type’ was
not found; perhaps you misspelled it?

Question

I have found out that this is because it is equivalent to the following:

joins(:planets, :planet_type)...

and SolarSystem does not have a planet_type association. I’d like to use the like_earth scope on Planet, the has_earthlike_planet on SolarSystem, and would like to avoid duplicating code and conditions. Is there a way to merge these scopes like I’m attempting to do but am missing a piece? If not, what other techniques can I use to accomplish these goals?

Answer 1

Apparently, at this time you can only merge simple constructs that don’t involve joins. Here is a possible workaround if you modify your models to look like this:

class SolarSystem < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :planets
  has_many :planet_types, :through => :planets

  scope :has_earthlike_planet, joins(:planet_types).merge(PlanetType.like_earth)
end

class Planet < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :solar_system
  belongs_to :planet_type

  scope :like_earth, joins(:planet_type).merge(PlanetType.like_earth)
end

class PlanetType < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :planets

   attr_accessible :gravity, :life

   scope :like_earth, where(:life => true, :gravity => 9.8)
end

** UPDATE **

For the record, a bug was filed about this behavior – hopefully will be fixed soon…