rails habtm relation

Question

Hi

I have 2 models which have a has_and_belongs_to_many relation:

class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_and_belongs_to_many :templates
end

class Template < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_and_belongs_to_many :categories
end

I want to know how can I get a category name through this relation, for example I find a first template:

t = Template.find(:first)

Then using t.categories will return an object, but I want to have category.name in return, how can I achieve this?

Answer 1

t.categories.first.name

Answer 2

Supposing that a category record has the name field you can do:

t.categories.map(&:name)