Elegantly selecting attributes from has_many :through join models in Rails

Question

I\'m wondering what the easiest/most elegant way of selecting attributes from join models in has_many :through associations is.

Lets say we have Items, Catalogs, and Cat

Answer 1

You should be able to do @catalog.catalog_item.position if you provide the other end of the association.

class Catalog < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :catalog_item
end

Now you can do Catalog.first.catalog_item.position.