rails linked tables “uninitialized constant” error

Question

I'm building what I thought was a fairly simple recipe app while learning RoR.

I've got a table for users, and a table for recipes, and a recipe_users table where a user is saving a list of recipes.

The error I'm getting from rails is "uninitialized constant User::RecipeUser"

My Models are as follows

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
   acts_as_authentic

   has_many :recipe_users
   has_many :recipes, :through = > :recipe_users
end

class Recipes < ActiveRecord::Base
   has_many :ingredients, :dependent => :destroy
   has_many :recipe_users
   has_many :users, :through => :recipe_users
end

class RecipeUsers < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :user
  belongs_to :recipe
end

now in my users controller, I am attempting to call

 @user = User.find(current_user.id)
 @userRecipes = @user.recipes.find()

looking at my mysql Show Tables, I get

recipe_users
recipes
schema_migrations
user_sessions
users

so as far as I can tell, I've got the naming conventions right.

Any suggestions as to why I'm getting this error?

pedalpete pedalpete · Accepted Answer · 2010-09-21T02:17:47

It looks like this was an issue of naming conventions.

I deleted all references to recipe_users and recreated the table, model and controller as meals.

Not a great name, but it all came together without a hitch.

I've never liked the naming conventions that rails seems to expect I think in part due to the pluralization without actually informing the developer of what name rails may be expecting.

rails linked tables “uninitialized constant” error

1 Answers