Rails 3 friendship model : how to ignore a friend request?

Question

I have the traditional friendship model:

The user model has:

has_many :friendships, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many :friends, :through => :friendships, :dependent => :destroy
  has_many :inverse_friendships, :class_name => "Friendship", :foreign_key => "friend_id", :dependent => :destroy
  has_many :inverse_friends, :through => :inverse_friendships, :source => :user, :dependent => :destroy

I would like to define the status "friend" only if a friend request has been sent, and accepted by the other user. Everything works fine except that I did not manage to process the "ignore friend request" part.

What I am trying to do is: on a user profile page, there's a list of requests from other user, waiting approval. The user can then accept a friend request (then it becomes a friend) or reject it (then the friendship relationship is destroyed).

Here is the piece of code, in the friendship controller, when it blocks:

<h2 class="small_v_space">Waiting your approval</h2>
<ul>
  <% for user in @user.inverse_friends %>
    <% if user.friends.exists?(@user) and not @user.friends.exists?(user) %>
      <li>
        <%=h user.name %>
          (<%= link_to "Accept", friendships_path(:friend_id => user), :method => :post %>,
           <%= link_to "Ignore", friendship_path, :controller => :friendships, :method => :delete  %>)
      </li
    <% end %>
  <% end %>
</ul>

The problem is that if I do like this, the delete method will delete the last added relationship, instead of the one linked to the ignore button.

Let's work with an example: Here is the relationship I would like to destroy: User_id: 10 Friend_id: 6 Friendship_id: 18

I'm on the 'show' page (profile) of user, whose user_id is 6. I see that user 10 has made a friend request that I would like to ignore. Even if I managed to extract the proper Friendship_id, doing:

<%= link_to "Ignore", friendship_path(Friendship_id), :controller => :friendships, :method => :delete  %>)

It results in "Cannot find Friendships with ID=18[where user_id=6]"

Does anyone know how I could call the destroy action on the right relationship in this case ? Or should I proceed differently ?

Many thanks for any clue!

EDIT

Destroy action of the friendship controller:

def destroy
    @friendship = current_user.friendships.find(params[:id])
    if @friendship.friend.friends.exists?(current_user)
      @friendship.destroy
      flash[:notice] = "Removed friendship."
    else
      @friendship.destroy
      flash[:notice] = "Removed friend request."
    end
    redirect_to current_user
  end

EDIT 2:

class Friendship
   belongs_to :user
   belongs_to: :friend, :class_name => 'User'
 end

User A sends a friend request to user B (A=user, B=friend in the instance of the class). If B accepts the requests, then another instance is created (B=user, A=friend). If there exists both a relation A->B and B->A, A is a friend of B. Otherwise, the request remains pending (or can be ignored, rejected...).

Answer 1

I'm editing my whole answer because I think I found the gist of your problem. When a user tries to be friends with someone, you add a relationship to that user but you don't add it to the other user. SO, current_user.friendships.find(params[:id]) expects the current_user to have a friendship with that id but that relationship doesn't belong to him, but to the other user.

I'm not sure if I made it clear enough, but here's my 2nd try:

Your link should be:

<%= link_to "Ignore", friendship_path(:id => friendship_id, :friend_id => user.id), :method => :delete  %>)

And then your action:

def destroy
  potential_friend = User.find(params[:friend_id])
  friend_request = potential_friend.friendships.find(params[:id])

  friendship = current_user.friendships.find_by_friend_id(potential_friend.id)
  if friendship.nil?      #Users are not friends and you want to delete the friend request
    friend_request.destroy
    flash[:notice] = "Removed friend request."
  else                    #Users are friends and you want to delete the friendship
    friendship.destroy
    friend_request.destroy
    flash[:notice] = "Removed friendship."
  end
  redirect_to current_user
end

I'm not sure if you should turn this into custom action. As you can see, it does much more than just destroy a single object.