如何在 Ruby on Rails 中访问 1 个 controller 中的多个模型

Question

A few minutes ago, I saw a user (bruno_pellizzetti) ask a question I had found an answer to while coding my own app with the same stack.

I wanted to share the answer but I could not, as the question was closed right after it was asked 3 hours ago, for supposedly being opinion related and comments are not allowed because my account has no rep (9 yr account lol). I tried editing the question so I could re open and answer there but it keeps saying the queue is full...

Thus I post this with a clarified question, because nobody actually answered the original closed one , clearly or directly.

How does one access multiple models in a different or unrelated controller in Ruby on Rails?

The original question:

I'm dealing with a question for a little bit and I can't get going... Basically I have two models, one: Client and the second: Work. So I have a Client and a Work basically. I have a lot of methods that I use inside each of those Model, like... full_name , or work_details for example, all inside the Model of each. But now I am dealing with this problem... I need to combine information of each of the models to create a single word document, you can say... an Invoice, where I need both methods, from Work model and from Client Model. So what is the best and correct way to do this? Do I manage something inside my existing controller, for example, inside my works_controler or vice versa? I don't want to re write all my Client model methods inside my work controller and I think it would be wrong... Any thoughts? Best regards I did a diagram, it would look basically like this: https://i.stack.imgur.com/mN9Gb.png

Answer 1

The most organized or conventional "rails way" to achieve this is to make an Invoice Controller. This allows you to later add other actions outside of just generating Invoices.

rails g controller Invoice index will generate a controller and a view folder named Invoice, along with an index.html view. (In my app I did a Home Controller and made a feed that accesses many models.)

You can thus access the Work model and Client model, with all their built in model methods and attributes by editing the newly created Invoice Controller like so:

def index
  @invoicework = Work.where(:user_id => current_user.id) #returns all work items that belong_to the currently logged in user and will be nil if not logged in
  @invoiceclient = Client.where(:clientname => "John Doe") #returns all clients who have the client name John Doe and will be nil if no clients have that name
   
  @invoicework.first.work_details #any work model method could be substituted for work_details. first is only necessary if the query returns more than 1 result. otherwise @invoicework.work_details would suffice
  @invoiceclient.first.full_name #any client model method could be used not just full_name, and same deal with the .first method and the query, it's only necessary if there is more than 1 result
end

You can then access this by adding a route that goes to invoice#index .

I don't know the exact specifics of Bruno app's model relationships, methods, or attributes, however using this approach one can modify those queries to access the appropriate values.