LEFT OUTER JOIN in Rails 4

Question

I have 3 models:

class Student < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :student_enrollments, dependent: :destroy
  has_many :courses, through: :student_enrollments
end

class Course < ActiveRecord::Base   
    has_many :student_enrollments, dependent: :destroy
    has_many :students, through: :student_enrollments
end

class StudentEnrollment < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :student
    belongs_to :course
end

I wish to query for a list of courses in the Courses table, that do not exist in the StudentEnrollments table that are associated with a certain student.

I found that perhaps Left Join is the way to go, but it seems that joins() in rails only accept a table as argument. The SQL query that I think would do what I want is:

SELECT *
FROM Courses c LEFT JOIN StudentEnrollment se ON c.id = se.course_id
WHERE se.id IS NULL AND se.student_id = <SOME_STUDENT_ID_VALUE> and c.active = true

How do I execute this query the Rails 4 way?

Any input is appreciated.

Answer 1

You can pass a string that is the join-sql too. eg joins("LEFT JOIN StudentEnrollment se ON c.id = se.course_id")

Though I'd use rails-standard table naming for clarity:

joins("LEFT JOIN student_enrollments ON courses.id = student_enrollments.course_id")