how to avoid duplicates in a has_many :through relationship?

Simpler solution that’s built into Rails:

 class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base
     has_many :blogs_readers, :dependent => :destroy
     has_many :readers, :through => :blogs_readers, :uniq => true
    end

    class Reader < ActiveRecord::Base
     has_many :blogs_readers, :dependent => :destroy
     has_many :blogs, :through => :blogs_readers, :uniq => true
    end

    class BlogsReaders < ActiveRecord::Base
      belongs_to :blog
      belongs_to :reader
    end

Note adding the :uniq => true option to the has_many call.

Also you might want to consider has_and_belongs_to_many between Blog and Reader, unless you have some other attributes you’d like to have on the join model (which you don’t, currently). That method also has a :uniq opiton.

Note that this doesn’t prevent you from creating the entries in the table, but it does ensure that when you query the collection you get only one of each object.

Update

In Rails 4 the way to do it is via a scope block. The Above changes to.

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :blogs_readers, dependent:  :destroy
 has_many :readers,  -> { uniq }, through: :blogs_readers
end

class Reader < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :blogs_readers, dependent: :destroy
 has_many :blogs, -> { uniq }, through: :blogs_readers
end

class BlogsReaders < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :blog
  belongs_to :reader
end

Update for Rails 5

The use of uniq in the scope block will cause an error NoMethodError: undefined method 'extensions' for []:Array. Use distinct instead :

class Blog < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :blogs_readers, dependent:  :destroy
 has_many :readers,  -> { distinct }, through: :blogs_readers
end

class Reader < ActiveRecord::Base
 has_many :blogs_readers, dependent: :destroy
 has_many :blogs, -> { distinct }, through: :blogs_readers
end

class BlogsReaders < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :blog
  belongs_to :reader
end