Invalid source reflection macro :has_many :through

Question

I have such angry associations: financings >- events >- subprograms >- programs. I want to get acces to last_financings from programs through all of them so code is:

class Fcp < Program
  has_many :fcp_subprograms,
           :foreign_key => 'parent_id'
  has_many :subprogram_last_actual_financings,
           :through => :fcp_subprograms,
           :source => :last_actual_financings

class FcpSubprogram < Program
  belongs_to :fcp,
             :class_name => 'Fcp',
             :foreign_key => 'parent_id'

  has_many :events,
           :foreign_key => 'fcp_id'

  has_many :last_actual_financings,
           :through => :events,
           :source => :last_actual_financings

class Event < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :fcp,
             :class_name => 'Fcp',
             :foreign_key => 'fcp_id'
  belongs_to :fcp_subprogram,
             :class_name => 'FcpSubprogram',
             :foreign_key => 'fcp_id'

  has_many :last_actual_financings,
           :class_name => 'ActualFinancing',
           :order => 'date DESC',
           :limit => 1

So when I want to access to subprogram_last_actual_financings in after_initialize function I get this error

Invalid source reflection macro :has_many :through for has_many :subprogram_last_actual_financings, :through => :fcp_subprograms.  Use :source to specify the source reflection.

but I have :source option in my associations. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The error you get is about source_reflection is an invalid association, because source for has_many through must be belongs_to, has_one or has_many without through option. So you can't use :last_actual_financings as a source.

Answer 2

As far as I remember you can't make association with double (or more) :through. The only thing you can do is write your own sql queries.

Here is my example how to do it:

class Person
  ...
  has_many :teams, :finder_sql =>
    'SELECT DISTINCT teams.* FROM teams
        INNER JOIN team_roles ON teams.id = team_roles.team_id
        INNER JOIN team_members ON team_roles.id = team_members.role_id
        WHERE ((team_members.person_id = #{id}))'

  # other standard associations
  has_many :team_members
  has_many :team_roles,
    :through => :team_members
  # and I couldn't do:
  # has_many :teams, :through => :team_roles

This is for relation Person -> has_many -> team_members -> has_many -> team_roles -> has_one - team.

Hope it helps.

Answer 3

This seems like a really awkward way of doing this... I'd rather make a virtual accessor in Program that calls something like this:

self.subprograms.first.events.first.financings.first(:order => 'date DESC')