activerecord - Rails Joins and include columns from joins table

Question

I don't understand how to get the columns I want from rails. I have two models - A User and a Profile. A User :has_many Profile (because users can revert back to an earlier version of their profile):

> DESCRIBE users;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field          | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id             | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| username       | varchar(255) | NO   | UNI | NULL    |                |
| password       | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| last_login     | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

 

> DESCRIBE profiles;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field          | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id             | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| user_id        | int(11)      | NO   | MUL | NULL    |                |
| first_name     | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
| last_name      | varchar(255) | NO   |     | NULL    |                |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
|      .                .          .      .       .             .       |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

In SQL, I can run the query:

> SELECT * FROM profiles JOIN users ON profiles.user_id = users.id LIMIT 1;
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| id | username  | password | last_login          | user_id | first_name    | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| 1  | john      | ******   | 2010-12-30 18:04:28 | 1       | John          | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+

See how I get all the columns for BOTH tables JOINED together? However, when I run this same query in Rails, I don't get all the columns I want - I only get those from Profile:

# in rails console
>> p = Profile.joins(:user).limit(1)
>> [#<Profile ...>]
>> p.first_name
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `first_name' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in `method_missing' from (irb):8
# I do NOT want to do this (AKA I do NOT want to use "includes")
>> p.user
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `user' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in method_missing' from (irb):9

I want to (efficiently) return an object that has all the properties of Profile and User together. I don't want to :include the user because it doesn't make sense. The user should always be part of the most recent profile as if they were fields within the Profile model. How do I accomplish this?

I think the problem has something to do with the fact that the Profile model doesn't have attributes for User...

Answer 1

Use select() to name the columns you want. At least this works in Rails 3.0.9.

Background: my application has a primary table named :rights. I wanted to be able to ascribe a tag and color to a given :right record so I could easily pick it out of an index listing. This doesn't cleanly fit the Rails picture of associated records; most :rights will never be tagged, and the tags are completely arbitrary (user input via tag/edit).

I could try duplicating the tag data in the :right record, but that violates normal form. Or I could try querying :tags for each :right record, but that is a painfully inefficient approach. I want to be able to join the tables.

MySQL console shows:

mysql> describe rights;
+------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type          | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id         | int(11)       | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |

  ...

| Tagid      | int(11)       | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+------------+---------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

mysql> describe tags;
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field      | Type         | Null | Key | Default | Extra          |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id         | int(11)      | NO   | PRI | NULL    | auto_increment |
| TagName    | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| TagColor   | varchar(255) | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| created_at | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
| updated_at | datetime     | YES  |     | NULL    |                |
+------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+

I am going to use TagName and TagColor in views/rights/index.html.erb, so I want the rights controller to include those columns in the @rights object it passes to the view. Since not every :right has a :tag, I want to use an outer join:

@rights = Right.joins("LEFT OUTER JOIN tags ON rights.Tagid = tags.id")

But, as everyone has found, this alone doesn't work: a block reference to TagName produces a server error. However, if I add a select at the end, all is well:

@rights = Right.joins("LEFT OUTER JOIN tags ON rights.Tagid = tags.id").select("rights.*,tags.TagName as TagName,tags.TagColor as TagColor")

Note added 6/7/13: the select clause does not require aliases - this works too:

.select("rights.*,tags.TagName,tags.TagColor")

Now I can reference TagName and TagColor in my view:

<% @rights.each do |right| %>
  <tr ALIGN=Left <%=
  # color background if this is tagged
  " BGCOLOR=#{right.TagColor}" if right.TagColor
  %> > ...
<% end %>