I've got models called answers, surveys, questions. Now in a survey, there can be up to 200 questions and so one survey can generate up to 200 answer-models in a page.
The question is: How can I save the array of answers I have in a single db-action and not iterate over the array and save each element individually, which takes a lot of time relatively?
You can pass the 'belongs_to' relationship an :autosave symbol. This will cause the answers to be automatically saved when you save the parent. Something like this then would probably be what you want:
class Survey < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many :questions
end
class Question < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :survey, :autosave
has_one :answer
end
class Answer < ActiveRecord::Base
belongs_to :question, :autosave
end
I don't know how exactly this will perform behind the scenes, but it will allow ActiveRecord to optimise the SQL and removes the need for you to iterate explicitly over the relationships.
No matter what you do, don't forget to wrap your multiple inserts in a transaction. Will really speed things up.
