From: Joe Zambella <jzambella@...>
Date: 2005-08-31T06:26:23+09:00
Subject: Rails Newbie - very simple question

Hello, I have a simple question based around the following example:

I have two model classes: Book and Author. The books table in my 
database has an author_id, which links the book to the appropriate 
author (aside: I know this isn't the best way to implement this, seeing 
that a book can have multiple authors, but I'm trying to keep it simple 
for the example and my own learning ;-)).

Now, I have my show.rhtml file for my Book class, where I want to 
display all of the pertinent info: book title, date published, and, 
most importantly to this example, the author's name.

My question is: given the book's author_id, what is the 
preferred/recommended way to grab the auther's information from the 
database from my book's show page?

Do I need to add a method to my Author class which, when provided with 
the unique author_id, will return the necessary information?

Thanks!
Joe Z.