Using before_create in Rails to normalize a many to many table
I am working on a pretty standard tagging implementation for a table of recipes. There is a many to many relationship between recipes and tags so the tags table will be normalized. Here are my models:
class Recipe < ActiveRecor开发者_JAVA百科d::Base
has_many :tag_joins, :as => :parent
has_many :tags, :through => :tag_joins
end
class TagJoin < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :parent, :polymorphic => true
belongs_to :tag, :counter_cache => :usage_count
end
class Tag < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :tag_joins, :as => :parent
has_many :recipes, :through => :tag_joins, :source => :parent
, :source_type => 'Recipe'
before_create :normalizeTable
def normalizeTable
t = Tag.find_by_name(self.name)
if (t)
j = TagJoin.new
j.parent_type = self.tag_joins.parent_type
j.parent_id = self.tag_joins.parent_id
j.tag_id = t.id
return false
end
end
end
The last bit, the before_create callback, is what I'm trying to get working. My goal is if there is an attempt to create a new tag with the same name as one already in the table, only a single row in the join table is produced, using the existing row in tags. Currently the code dies with:
undefined method `parent_type' for #<Class:0x102f5ce38>
Any suggestions?
Edit
Here are my tables as well:
create_table "recipes", :force => true do |t|
t.string "name"
t.text "abstract", :limit => 255
t.integer "user_id"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
create_table "tag_joins", :force => true do |t|
t.string "parent_type"
t.integer "parent_id"
t.integer "tag_id"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
end
create_table "tags", :force => true do |t|
t.string "name"
t.boolean "is_featured"
t.integer "usage_count"
t.datetime "created_at"
t.datetime "updated_at"
t.string "category"
end
I don't see how this can work. If you add a tag through the association, the tag is created before the join table row. Also, the callback is trying to get the parent_type
of a collection, which makes no sense.
I'm assuming you want something like this:
r1 = Recipe.create
r1.tags.create("chili") # tag is created
r2 = Recipe.create
r2.tags.create("chili") # existing tag is used
You could emulate this by defining a method on Recipe:
def add_tag(tag_name)
tags << Tag.find_or_create_by_name(tag_name)
end
And calling it instead of .tags.create
:
r1 = Recipe.create
r1.add_tag("chili") # tag is created
r2 = Recipe.create
r2.add_tag("chili") # existing tag is used
Should that be source_type
, instead of parent_type
? Since we don't know exactly what columns you have specified in tag_joins, that's my best guess. Rails doesn't seem to think that the column exists.
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