how do I retrieve attributes of different models from controller?

Question

I have a Vendor controller for show:

def show
@vendor = Vendor.find(params[:id])

respond_to do |format|
  format.html # show.html.erb
  format.xml  { render :xml => @vendor }
end
end

In my View for Reviews (where Vendor :has_many Reviews)

 <% if @vendor.reviews.empty? %>
  No Analyst Reports yet
 <% else %>
  <% for review in @vendor.reviews %>

   <%= review.user_id %>
   <%= review.summary %><br />
   <hr class="span-5" />

  <% end %>
 <% end %>

So I am basically going through a 'for' loop for all the reviews for a particular vendor (this has been a tricky concept for me but it seems to work).

So: I want to display the User.name and user.email. I know what the user_id for each corresponding Review is (review.user_id) but I don't know how to display values for the User model.

I thought using find_by_id would work but it doesn't recognize User.

Help?

Answer 1

If you've set up a :has_one relationship between the Review model and the User model, then you can just use review.user to access it. So you'd get user attributes with review.user.name, review.user.email, etc.

Note that if you're going to be retrieving many child records to loop through like this, you may want to call find with an :include parameter to reduce the number of queries made. Something like:

Vendor.find(params[:id], :include => { :reviews => :user } )

See the API docs for has_one for more info.