[PATCH] Add methods on active record to denote whether any associated objects exist for that association

+1 patch verified and all tests pass.

It appears that this method would be very handy, when needed.

-1, I don't like the alias_method to has_#{name} and it seems that keeping a similar api to the dirty methods would be better. For example, if a Post has many Comments:

post = Post.new
post.comments?

instead of

post = Post.new
post.has_comments?

would be a lot cleaner.

+1 on the feature, -1 on the implementation.

I agree with Nick on excluding has for the methods, ie comments? instead of has_comments?. This would be more in line with what you get from normal attributes.

I think post.comments.any? is a more consistent API. IMO it's better to keep the number of generated methods on the base class to a minimum, and layer this kind of behavior onto the association proxy object.

-1 on the implementation

I agree with Nick on this as well.

note that #49 was similar and denied - although this has more to do with verifying that the collection is empty or object exists

Here's a patch for 2-3-stable removing the has_#{name} methods and keeps only the #{name}? methods.

forgot to mention that the patch is applied on master too.

verified.

+1 Patch works perfectly in master.

I would like to point out two things:
1) The usage scenario described was for serialization to xml so that a corresponding ActiveResource could then be queried in a simple(shallow?) way before making a nested call. That is the reason why the implementation has the 'has_'. In the context of a ARecord, the method with '?' makes sense (to be compatible with Rails' notion of asking a question), but when you want to serialize the same, in my case in the to_xml method on ARecord, the '?' has to be treated specially - which is why I provided an alias without the '?'.

As far as the presence of the 'has_' - this is present to differentiate between the query to retrieve the associated objects vs the presence of these associated objects.

I hope I made myself clear as to why the implementation was the way it was.