Object-Oriented Programming with Rails ActiveRecord

Have you seen this before?

@posts = Post.find :all, :conditions => { :user_id => @user.id }

This happens to new Rails developers quite a bit. This code retrieves correctly an array of @posts and send them to the view for rendering. But what about it?

The key thing here is that this can also be done in a better way:

@posts = @user.posts

When you use the former method to retrieve @posts, you are actually thinking in database terms along the lines of "in the database table 'posts' and therefore ActiveRecord model 'Post', retrieve the rows whose foreign key column 'user_id' has the value @user.id." ActiveRecord is a pattern for accessing your data from objects, but you also have to combine it with the power of the object-oriented-ness of Ruby to create the chimes of beautiful code. Using Rails and Ruby does not make anyone a better programmer automagically. One can still write code in Java/C# in the same procedural style as if you were writing C. It is how to leverage the best of all worlds makes you a better problem solver.

Therefore, think like an object bigot. Think in objects, and not in database foreign key column values. Whenever you see any Rails code in the pattern of this:

:model_id => @model.id

Just stop. "Objects on Rails" sounds a lot better than "Ruby on Foreign Keys."