I need help with routes.rb

Ok thankyou.
I will try this.
edge rails? maybe the missing ingredient, i had no idea, thanks(:

I dont know RyanB. Everything i am reading on edge rails is a bit over my head at the moment.
I am learning how to program with ruby, most posts i have seen are people learning ruby who are already programmers.
All I am trying to acheive at the moment with my project is;

I have the relashionships right (i think). They work in the console.
such as i can create an object and then run say order.invoices << invoice  and the invoice then gets the order_id and order.invoices gives me the order, the customer, the invoice ect(brilliant-I love it!)
But,

How do i do this in the application, I want the user to be able to open an invoice and create lines for that particular invoice. The only way i know how to do this is with the select option in the view.

From my little experience i have found that the solution is usually simple but i havnt found it yet.  I thought the url should be something like invoice/1/invoice_lines/something and that is why i was on the routes.rb track but maybe i was on the wrong track.

ok these are the models;
class Customer < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :invoices
    has_many :orders, :through => :invoices
   
    end

class Order < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :invoices
    has_many :customers, :through =>:invoices
   
      end
class Invoice < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :order
    belongs_to :customer
   
      has_many :invoice_items
      has_many :items, :through => :invoice_items
   
end
class InvoiceItem < ActiveRecord::Base
      belongs_to :item
      belongs_to :invoice
   end

class Item < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :invoice_items
    has_many :invoices, :through => :invoice_items
   
end

So for a_customer I would like to create an_order for a_customer and an_invoice. I think an_invoice would need to be saved regardless as invoice is the join model holding the id's of customer and order. Is this right?
But first things first I would like to know more simply how to create a new whatever @whatever.
So that for example when the user is at a_invoice and creates invoice_items they know they are for the invoice the user is at and the invoice_items inherit the id of the invoice.

In order to create an order you will also need to create an invoice. Try this:

# in the view
<%= link_to 'create order', :action => 'create_order', :id => @customer %>

Assuming @customer is set, this will pass the customer's id to the action. You can use this to create an empty order/invoice and add it to the person. Like this:

def create_order
  @customer = Customer.find(params[:id])
  @invoice = @customer.invoices.create
  @invoice.order.create
  redirect_to #....
end

This will create an empty invoice and order for the given customer.

Last edited by ryanb (2006-11-06 13:01:05)

Did you try the code I gave above? What error do you get for that code? Make sure you are calling @customer.invoices.create (it needs to be plural).

Oh, sorry, don't know what I was thinking. Try this:

@invoice.create_order

Oh, the invoice probably needs to be saved for the order_id column to be set:

@invoice = @customer.invoices.create
@invoice.create_order
@invoice.save

Actually this can all be done much simply with:

@customer.invoices.create!(:order => Order.create!)

Or if you are running Edge Rails (1.2):

@customer.orders << Order.create

I think that works anyway. Untested.

You need to create the @customer instance variable in the controller action. For example, if you want it in the "show" action in your controller, you would do:

# in controller
def show
  @customer = Customer.find(params[:id])
end
# in show.rhtml
<% for invoice in @customer.invoices %>
  <h1>This invoice is for <%= @customer.name %></h1>
<% end %>