Rails ActiveRecord Includes with Inner Join

Question

When using includes on an ActiveRecord model, is there a better way to specify an inner join then:

User.includes(:address).joins(:address)

It seems like there should be a more beautiful way to specify when you want an inner join and an includes?

Answer 1

As Tom Rossi explained in the comment section of your question.

• If you want to join the address table with inner join association you should use join()
• If you want to preload the data you should use include() or eager_load(). I Personally prefer eager_load() function, because it guaranties that left join is going to be use. includes() may decide to use separate queries instead of left join association
• If you want to use inner join and preload the data you just combine the two approaches as it is in you case