zackcarlson014/active-record-associations-introduction

Introduction to Active Record Associations

Previously, we worked through object-relational mapping and building Ruby classes that can represent SQL records. Active Record is like an automation and simplification of those concepts.

Active Record is the interface that gives you the tools to link a database to your application. It lets you structure your data models in a logical and nearly plain-English way.

We'll cover topics that will include answers to these questions:

• What are the advantages of using Active Record?
• What are the features of Rake?
• What are common methods accessible through Active Record associations?
• How do you use association macros?

Having a solid understanding of Active Record will make persisting data much easier. This will replace the need for a lot of the custom code we wrote in when creating ORMs. We’ll cover working with models, setting them up, and building associations between them. Over the next several lessons, we'll explain Active Record and work through a few labs that will help reinforce these concepts.