Associating users and articles

Question

So I just started with Rails and right now looking over HABTM. I am reading the DHH book and I see that he has two models namely article and user. They have HABTM relationships. I am wondering however whether I need to create a separate migration for the articles_users model by myself or will Rails do it for me?

If so, what happen if I create a new user and associate it with an article? Will Rails know right away what to enter inside the articles_users table?

Ex:

u = User.new(:name => "John");
a = Article.new(:title =>"Rails");

#can I do this?

a.user << u

#will rails automatically create an entry inside articles_users table?

I am somewhat confused on where Rails stop in terms of making tables for us or whatnot.

Answer 1

You will need to manually create the table with a migration. However, most rails developers now prefer Has Many Through instead of HABTM. Another benefit is that when you generate the "join model" rails will make a migration for you!