How to get activerecord associations via reflection

Model.reflections gives information about a model’s associations. It is a Hash keyed on the association name. e.g.

Post.reflections.keys # => ["comments"]

Here is an example of some of the information it can be used to access:

Post.reflections["comments"].table_name # => "comments"
Post.reflections["comments"].macro # => :has_many
Post.reflections["comments"].foreign_key # => "message_id"

Note: this answer has been updated to cover Rails 4.2 based on MCB’s answer and the comments below. In earlier versions of Rails the reflection’s foreign_key was accessed using primary_key_name instead, and the keys for the reflections may be symbols instead of strings depending on how the association was defined e.g. :comments instead of "comments".

Leave a Comment

Hata!: SQLSTATE[HY000] [1045] Access denied for user 'divattrend_liink'@'localhost' (using password: YES)