I don't understand how to get the columns I want from rails. I have two models - A User and a Profile. A User :has_many Profile (because users can revert back to an earlier version of their profile):
> DESCRIBE users;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| username | varchar(255) | NO | UNI | NULL | |
| password | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| last_login | datetime | YES | | NULL | |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
> DESCRIBE profiles;
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| Field | Type | Null | Key | Default | Extra |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
| id | int(11) | NO | PRI | NULL | auto_increment |
| user_id | int(11) | NO | MUL | NULL | |
| first_name | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| last_name | varchar(255) | NO | | NULL | |
| . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . |
| . . . . . . |
+----------------+--------------+------+-----+---------+----------------+
In SQL, I can run the query:
> SELECT * FROM profiles JOIN users ON profiles.user_id = users.id LIMIT 1;
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| id | username | password | last_login | user_id | first_name | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
| 1 | john | ****** | 2010-12-30 18:04:28 | 1 | John | ... |
+----+-----------+----------+---------------------+---------+---------------+-----+
See how I get all the columns for BOTH tables JOINED together? However, when I run this same query in Rails, I don't get all the columns I want - I only get those from Profile:
# in rails console
>> p = Profile.joins(:user).limit(1)
>> [#<Profile ...>]
>> p.first_name
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `first_name' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in `method_missing' from (irb):8
# I do NOT want to do this (AKA I do NOT want to use "includes")
>> p.user
>> NoMethodError: undefined method `user' for #<ActiveRecord::Relation:0x102b521d0> from /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/activerecord-3.0.1/lib/active_record/relation.rb:373:in method_missing' from (irb):9
I want to (efficiently) return an object that has all the properties of Profile and User together. I don't want to :include the user because it doesn't make sense. The user should always be part of the most recent profile as if they were fields within the Profile model. How do I accomplish this?
