LEFT OUTER JOIN in Rails 4

Question

I have 3 models:

class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :student_enrollments, dependent: :destroy
  has_many :courses, through: :student_enrollment         


        

Answer 1

I've been struggling with this kind of problem for quite some while, and decided to do something to solve it once and for all. I published a Gist that addresses this issue: https://gist.github.com/nerde/b867cd87d580e97549f2

I created a little AR hack that uses Arel Table to dynamically build the left joins for you, without having to write raw SQL in your code:

class ActiveRecord::Base
  # Does a left join through an association. Usage:
  #
  #     Book.left_join(:category)
  #     # SELECT "books".* FROM "books"
  #     # LEFT OUTER JOIN "categories"
  #     # ON "books"."category_id" = "categories"."id"
  #
  # It also works through association's associations, like `joins` does:
  #
  #     Book.left_join(category: :master_category)
  def self.left_join(*columns)
    _do_left_join columns.compact.flatten
  end

  private

  def self._do_left_join(column, this = self) # :nodoc:
    collection = self
    if column.is_a? Array
      column.each do |col|
        collection = collection._do_left_join(col, this)
      end
    elsif column.is_a? Hash
      column.each do |key, value|
        assoc = this.reflect_on_association(key)
        raise "#{this} has no association: #{key}." unless assoc
        collection = collection._left_join(assoc)
        collection = collection._do_left_join value, assoc.klass
      end
    else
      assoc = this.reflect_on_association(column)
      raise "#{this} has no association: #{column}." unless assoc
      collection = collection._left_join(assoc)
    end
    collection
  end

  def self._left_join(assoc) # :nodoc:
    source = assoc.active_record.arel_table
    pk = assoc.association_primary_key.to_sym
    joins source.join(assoc.klass.arel_table,
      Arel::Nodes::OuterJoin).on(source[assoc.foreign_key].eq(
        assoc.klass.arel_table[pk])).join_sources
  end
end

Hope it helps.