Add number of records in belongs_to relationship in Rail app?

Question

Hi Everyone?

I have a Rails simple application that has two main models. A person model and a gift model. Gifts belong to people, and people have many gifts.

I am currently (in the people index view) listing all people in the database with the following code:

<% for person in @people %>
<li><%= link_to h(person.name), person %></li>
<% end %>

What I would like to do, is have the number of gifts associated to a person next to their name in brackets. Example:

Danny McC (10)

Is there a built in way of doing this? Such as:

<%= @person.name.count =>

Is this possible?

Thanks,

Danny

Answer 1

If you Person model has has_many :gifts, in you model also add:

de name_and_gifts_count
  name_and_gifts_count = name
  name_and_gifts_count += '('
  name_and_gifts_count += gifts.count.to_s
  name_and_gifts_count += ')'
  return name_and_gifts_count
end

then in your link, use:

<%= link_to h(person.name_and_gifts_count), person %>

Answer 2

Don't accept my answer, cause I don't want to steal Yannis' points, but his method can be rewritten like this:

def name_and_gifts_count
  return "#{name} (#{gifts.count})"
end

Actually, I would leave out return too. The last statement is automatically returned in Ruby.

def name_and_gifts_count
  "#{name} (#{gifts.count})"
end