class

ActiveRecord::Associations::AssociationCollection

v3.0.0 - Show latest stable - 1 note - Superclass: ActiveRecord::Associations::AssociationProxy

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What's this?

Active Record Association Collection

AssociationCollection is an abstract class that provides common stuff to ease the implementation of association proxies that represent collections. See the class hierarchy in AssociationProxy.

You need to be careful with assumptions regarding the target: The proxy does not fetch records from the database until it needs them, but new ones created with build are added to the target. So, the target may be non-empty and still lack children waiting to be read from the database. If you look directly to the database you cannot assume that’s the entire collection because new records may have been added to the target, etc.

If you need to work on all current children, new and existing records, load_target and the loaded flag are your friends.

Show files where this class is defined (1 file)

activerecord/lib/active_record/associations/association_collection.rb

August 13, 2008 - (v1.2.6 - v2.1.0)

3 thanks

Insertion/Deletion callbacks

All ActiveRecord associations except for has_many :through support callbacks for pre- and post-insertion/deletion via the following, self-documenting parameters:

Adding to an Association

:before_add

:after_add

Removing from an Association

:before_remove

:after_remove

The flexibility that these callbacks offer is quite handy, but I’ll demonstrate with a silly example: logging each insertion and deletion.

class Ship < ActiveRecord::Base

  has_many :pirates, 
    :after_add => :say_hello,
    :before_remove => :say_goodbye

  private

  def say_hello(pirate)
    STDOUT.write("hello #{pirate.name} ")
  end

  def say_goodbye(pirate)
    STDOUT.write("goodbye #{pirate.name} ")
  end

end

Now, we’ll see confirmation when we add/remove Pirates in the console from our ship (and yes, this must be the ghetto):

>> jolly_roger = PirateShip.new

=> #<Ship id: nil, created_at: nil, updated_at: nil>
>> jolly_roger.pirates << Pirate.create(:name => 'Black Bart')
hello Black Bart => [#<Pirate id: 1, name: "Black Bart", created_at: "2008-07-29 14:41:13", updated_at: "2008-08-11 11:51:25">
>> jolly_roger.pirates.first.delete
goodbye Black Bart => []