HMT self-referential relationship breaks while calling the inverse join relationship

[ghost]

When I call the inverse relationship inside a lambda function the model breaks and I can't access successors anymore. I have also tried to rewrite the recursive function to use the family association directly, instead of breaking successors, inverse_families now breaks, i.e., it returns null instead of the associated records.

If I call predecessors.each inside a lambda function nothing breaks, although it breaks when calling successors.each as mentioned above.

Family

class Family < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to   :successor, class_name: Shipyard.name,
                           inverse_of: :inverse_families,
                           counter_cache: true
  belongs_to :predecessor, class_name: Shipyard.name,
                           inverse_of: :families,
                           counter_cache: :inverse_families_count
end

Shipyard

class Shipyard < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many         :families, foreign_key: :successor_id,
                              dependent: :restrict
  has_many     :predecessors, through: :families
  has_many :inverse_families, class_name: Family.name,
                              foreign_key: :predecessor_id,
                              dependent: :restrict
  has_many       :successors, through: :inverse_families

  attr_writer     :virtual_predecessors
  attr_accessible :virtual_predecessors

  invalid_predecessors = lambda { |record| record.successors_all }
  loop_error = "can't include records that would cause an indefinite loop"
  validates :virtual_predecessors, exclusion: { in: invalid_predecessors,
                                                message: loop_error }

  def predecessors_all(record = self)
    result = [ ]
    record.predecessors.each do |record|
      result << record.id << record.predecessors_all
    end
    result.flatten.uniq
  end

  def successors_all(record = self)
    result = [ ]
    record.successors.each do |record|
      result << record.id << record.successors_all
    end
    result.flatten.uniq
  end

  def virtual_predecessors
    if @virtual_predecessors.nil?
      predecessor_ids
    else
      @virtual_predecessors
    end
  end
end

[tenderlove]

Can you post the schema.rb for this, a rails app, or possibly port it to the Rails test suite? I can't really fix this without a fully self contained test case.

[ghost]

Sure, I can post the schema.rb; however, I am not experienced enough to write a test suite...

create_table "families", :force => true do |t|
  t.integer  "successor_id"
  t.integer  "predecessor_id"
  t.datetime "created_at"
  t.datetime "updated_at"
end

add_index "families", ["predecessor_id"], :name => "index_families_on_predecessor_id"
add_index "families", ["successor_id"], :name => "index_families_on_successor_id"

create_table "shipyards", :force => true do |t|
  t.string   "name"
  t.integer  "families_count",         :default => 0
  t.integer  "inverse_families_count", :default => 0
  t.datetime "created_at"
  t.datetime "updated_at"
end

add_index "shipyards", ["name"], :name => "index_shipyards_on_name", :unique => true

[jonleighton]

@jlalin this may help you

[isaacsanders]

@ghost Is this still an issue?

[steveklabnik]

Hi @ghost! Any updates? Are you still seeing this problem? We haven't heard from you in a while.

[frodsan]

I'm closing this because we don't have enough information to reproduce this problem and there is no reply from @ghost. If this still persists, please update the ticket with clear reproduction steps or a sample app, and we'll reopen it.

Thanks!